Resurrection
by skywalker05
Summary: ME2 AU. After the Normandy's destruction, both Shepard and Joker fall to Alchera's surface. When Miranda rebuilds him to be dependent on a drug that cures his disease, Shepard has to choose between her morals and her pilot. Shoker.
1. Death of the Normandy

Prologue

Kendra Shepard stumbled through the guts of her ship, through human-thick braids of wires like neural links and battlefield entrails. Part of her wanted to shake and sob and be somewhere _else—_but part of her grimaced and carried on. That was the way it had always been.

The Normandy was gutted.

Fire skirled through tiny openings where solid bulkhead had been, letting in screams of rending metal and equalizing atmospheres. Perspiration drip fogged the inside of her helmet, blurred her vision. She slogged up the stairs to the Normandy's bridge, one arm flung out in front of her as if it was any more fire-resistant than her face. Crackling spars blocked her way.

_I walked up these steps one thousand times_, she thought, _when they were blue and cool and were not _dying—

She turned back, followed the other curving arm of the stairs, opened the fire-blackened blast door.

The hull breach was here.

She didn't even notice space gaping, blue with leaking atmosphere and ion trail, above her between the Normandy's ribs, until she was halfway across.

After the firestorm, everything was so _quiet_, as if the sound had been sucked out into the void along with the air. The gravity worked—as long as there was a floor to latch on to. Shepard stalked forward, her own breath crackling in her ears and beating through the eerie silence. Everything was so silent…she needed to work to keep her breath regulated, to keep from gasping in and wasting oxygen.

Eerie and eerier. Chairs torn from their moorings on the forward hall created a maze of surfaces that bumped against her helmet. Slowly, the world falling around her in battle-clarity that said _I will give in later_, she reached for the back of the pilot's chair.

Joker was still working. With a breath mask clamped over his face he stared at screens and tried to coax flickering red lights back to green, his face blank. She stood stilled by surprise for a moment, wondering why he wasn't doing what she would have done in his place—trying to make his way out, trying to fight against a body that wouldn't move, that trapped him so much more than the rest of the crew were. But he just kept typing.

Shepard hissed, "Let's get you out of here."

* * *

Joker Moreau was going to succeed. What other option was there, with the Normandy falling apart around his ears? He had to save her, had to work with her to _win_ this. Status screens flashed that half the ship was breached and the other half contained fire. One escape pod left. If he sealed off the bridge, he could survive, but if he gave power to the drives and forgot about the abandoned body, they could escape the system.

Most pilots wouldn't even consider it. Joker knew that, and remembered trouncing most pilots at flight school.

He slid one screen to the side to pay attention to another, then heard Shepard speak.

* * *

He said, "Commander, I can still save the ship. Just give me some time. We can still make it."

"We've taken too much damage!"

She watched him stare at the screens with that blank combat-mode expression, watched it shift to a grimace.

He said, "I can patch life support through to the mass accelerator drive and kick us out of orbit-!"

"There isn't enough life support left! Don't throw yourself away for the ship."

"No offense, commander, but she's important." He flicked his gaze around the controls, still _typing_-

_He sees her as alive, _Shepard thought. _He sees her as himself. _But he's _crew-_"You're more important. There'll be other ships."

He blinked, taking in the flickering golden screens and the plates of shrapnel outside the viewports, looking over his shoulder at the vacuum. "No..." He began to mourn. There was pause. Then, "Help me up."

"Come on." She bent to push an arm under his and take his weight on her shoulders. They stumbled away from the chair, his voice in her ear tight with pain as she got a solid grip on his arm.

"Careful!"

He walked slowly and laboriously, weighing her down. But her driving force was what it had always been: keep the crew together. They were a new family for her, one she had chosen—and she had a responsibility to them to keep them safe.

As Shepard stepped back into the collapsing inferno of the lower level, Joker's helmet glanced against hers and rattled her skull. Heat worked at bursting through the armor of her back in waves as she fought through the innards of the dying Normandy. If Joker said anything else, she couldn't hear it for the fire-hiss and the deep scream of straining metal, but his _"Careful"_ echoed in her thoughts. She'd rather break his brittle bones than leave him to burn—

So she rushed forward with all her strength toward the airlock of the escape pod as a gulf filled with stars opened between it and the ship. She saw a way to succeed and took it, thinking in trajectories, in _forget saving myself-_

She unslung his arm from around her shoulders and pushed.

He shouted, "Commander!"

The backlash propelled her out from the Normandy too, into space where her hands pinwheeled before her as she realized there was no longer anything to hold on to. A flak-spraying geyser of fire shot from the Normandy's flank. The escape pod's silver sides broke open; Shepard squeezed her eyes closed against the flare of light. In the next possible moment she could open her eyes, she saw Joker floating, curling away from the disemboweled escape pod.

And then the crumbling ship body began to drift away from her. She flailed at the ether, realizing in a distant _this is too much for human minds _sort of way that she was going to float here until her oxygen ran out, or until the gravity well took her tiny form—

She flailed, suddenly feeling cold without the fire, the Normandy husk showing her its pitted silver belly. She tried to breathe slowly, tried to regain battle-coldness, but like a dying star her mask, her soldier-self, had been burnt away to show a shell of the panic she hid-

The planet was taking her.

Seconds felt like minutes. _I can do this I can make it, make a plan—_

_ There is no plan._

Something nicked the back of her neck and kicked her head forward. There was white steaming air rushing out of her suit. _Must hold it in, must keep it safe—_she slapped at the tear in the suit, trying to pinch it shut, her throat tightening into burn as she tried to fight against screaming—

And stopped, frozen bent back and falling, to watch someone suffer a harsher fate.

Joker wasn't moving. Too tired or hurt or _Normandy-less_, he fell in the distance with a limpness like a dead thing on the battlefield, not _trying _any more.

White strings whipped past Shepard's face mask. _Atmosphere,_ she thought. _Isn't it beautiful. How long will it take, I wonder, for me to die?_

She watched the reflections across his faceplate, wondering what his expression underneath was saying.

Her breath started to constrict, started to burn in her throat. She eked out, "I'm sorry."

His voice so loud in her ear. "_Shepard!"_

It didn't take a long time.

* * *

Chapter I

Miranda Lawson stood on a starry plane. The Illusive Man sat with one leg folded over the other, flecks of ash dashed from his cigarette burning orange like the planet behind him. He said, "Why have you contacted me? The plan should be progressing perfectly."

Miranda folded her arms, knowing exactly her plan and hoping she could express it out loud as clearly as she could in her mind. "It is progressing perfectly. But another body fell with Shepard's. The ship's pilot."

The Illusive Man waited for this to sound important.

"You told me you didn't want any neural implants," Miranda began

"Yes. It is essential that Shepard remain exactly the way she was, psychologically and physically."

"I understand that. But I was thinking. If we revived the pilot, implanted _him_ instead—we'd have a lever against her. She's fiercely loyal to her crew. I've thought of all the expenses—we have what we need already."

He tipped his cigarette against his ash tray, looked at her with lazy, knowing eyes. "We don't want her to see us as captors, Miranda. She's human—on our side. And she is not a safe enemy to have."

"Sir, look at his file." She tossed a golden sheet of screen from her omnitool to him.

His brow furrowed.

She said, "I can make it look like a favor."

He leaned back against the black chair. "If this part of the experiment complicates things, _you _will be responsible for fixing the mess."

"Yes, sir. I can also tell you that Shepard will _not _be entirely willing to trust us. Alternative measures _are _necessary." She tensed. If her benefactor disapproved…

"Do your experiment, Ms. Lawson. If it hurts more than helps, I will take over your task personally."

Shivers chilled her. "Sir."

He keyed a button and she faded, the walls of the Lazarus communication suite reforming around her.

* * *

Not moving. Shepard opened her eyes into a clinical white world as still as sleep paralysis. People moved above her—a woman, face blurry, then growing clearer as she moved closer.

"She's coming around. This is too early-put her under. Hurry!" An accented voice, a woman wearing untouched white when Shepard felt that somewhere, something, must be splattered with blood. She couldn't feel her body; it was like falling asleep, like nerves disconnecting—

She raised a hand to lever herself out of the bunk, maybe to strike, but only the semblance of a hand lifted in front of her face, pale and spidery as a thing dwelling its whole life in sunless depths. It was not something to be controlled.

The voices continued, loud, as the people around her moved, but her own breathing in her ears struck her as so much more important.

The man moved in the distance, behind a forest of robot arms and IV drips.

And then Shepard didn't care enough to keep her eyes open any more. The painless, feelingless haze of sleep crawled up her face into her thoughts. The pale hand-thing dropped away.

* * *

She woke up. The white ceiling with its flaring lights was almost comfortably familiar. She felt crinkling cushions beneath her. Gingerly she sat up, and a muscle twanged in her side, pulling between her ribs. She clamped her hand over the pain, wincing, and noticed scars traced along the back of her hands, their interiors glowing like chips of fire.

Last thing she remembered, she'd been dying. This was not black space.

She forced herself to stand up, legs aching as they worked. She braced one hand against the bed, and with the other felt her hair, tied up in a bun at the top of her head. A few blonde strands escaped to string out beside her ear.

Dizzy, she looked at the floor. It took a moment to get her thoughts in order, to figure out how she was supposed to react. Then she scanned the room, saw a person with a uniform identical to hers sitting up on a hospital bed across the room. It was a male, back hunched, and in a moment she realized who it was.

Her _keep the crew safe, keep them alive, keep them together _instinct kicked in at the same time as the voice of the woman she'd heard before crackled across an overhead comm. "Shepard. This station is under attack. There's a pistol in the locker nearby, Find your way to me—" The voice bled into static.

_Of course_, Shepard thought. _Everyone's always under attack._

It _was _Joker in the next bed, rubbing his temples and looking around. "Whoa." He looked around. "What the…"

She strode over to him, ignoring the stiffness of her knees. She couldn't believe—

"Joker…!" She stared at him, tried for words. Failed.

He swung his legs out of the bed, rubbed at the back of his neck. His expression suggested he was having a similar problem knowing what to say. "What happened, Commander? I thought…" He looked up at her.

"Honestly, I don't know. We were falling…"

"The Normandy was destroyed. Yeah, I know. It was real. And I wish it wasn't, but…then what is this?"

"I don't know. But we're not safe until I figure it out."

Joker paused, digesting this. Then:

He grinned. "You've got a plan?"

Alarms were keening and there was a weapons locker in the room. "Sure I do. Let's get out of here."

He stood with roughly as much confidence as she had. Shepard moved closer, but his halting steps toward the room's door told her that he didn't want the help. She _knew _that, but they were about to be in a firefight. He walked awkwardly, shoulders canted. She'd protect him.

What _was _this room? Too tech filled to be an office, too clean for an operating theatre.

The locker next to her bed held a shield pack and a loaded pistol.

(_Why'd they keep this here?_ Shepard wondered. _It isn't a prop for a hospital set.)_

But she powered it up and met Joker at the door.

He looked haggard—looked like she felt. He looked pale too, skin almost transparent, scars stretching traces across his forehead and under messily-shaved beard. No hat, she realized with something of a shock.

_Last time I checked we were on our way to becoming shooting stars. How does this moment exist?_

But it did. She crept out along the silver hallway, the pistol feeling small and alien in her hand. It wasn't built like she was used to; a small stencil along the barrel read 'heat sink'. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him following her.

Robotic footsteps slammed down in front of her and she crouched down, waving for wary-looking Joker to do the same behind her. She peered out to see humanoid silver mechs plodding toward her, their red eyes the size of human faces. The ratchet sound of bullets started, shook the walls. Shepard leaned out and sprayed fire back.

And so it went. They pressed on through the windowless building crawling with mechs, clean white droids that mourned their own confused demise in tinny voices.

Shepard and Joker peered around a corner to see a human soldier holding a catwalk against a crowd of mechs. A squat robot barreling along behind him turned toward Shepard's hiding place, flechettes spitting from gun-mouths on its sides.

Shepard fired, tore furrows in the rushing thing. It stumbled, crashing onto broken knees and scrambling forward. It was a tough little thing; bullets kept pinging off even as it passed her and turned around to shoot again as she whirled to face it, grimacing.

Joker, crouched down behind the half-wall, got his hands around the mech and flipped it, gifting its gunmetal underbelly to Shepard. Her next bullet tore through its iron innards as it gave a dying kick. Joker stepped back, trying to get his arms out of its way. He miss-stepped; his shoulders hit the wall and rebounded.

Shepard scooped the dead mech aside with her foot and made for him, expecting to need to change the status of her pilot from _soldier _to _injured civilian to protect. _

But he was running his hands along his arms to check for cracks, shaking his head to stretch his neck. She remembered reading that Vrolik's made men from glass.

Joker met her questioning eyes. "I'm okay." He stood and carefully looked over the barrier. The dark-skinned soldier waved them forward; more mechs swarmed into the room, billowing smoke.


	2. Lazarus

II

From the time they saw blue-glowing Jacob throw a mech to its destruction to the time they found Miranda, Shepard's mind buzzed with questions—but she had a distraction; she could just keep shooting, just keep interrogating, just keep moving.

Only in the escape from the mech-infested station, as Shepard stared into the too-perfectly framed face of Miranda, did explanations start coming and endorphins start draining, leaving her tired shoulders slumped. The floor of the shuttle rocked under them a little, like waves on the sea—warm as sun-washed waves. Shepard crossed her arms, leaned back in the plush seat. Opposite her, Jacob sat with one arm leaning on his knee, his weapons harness visible and bulky along his leg and back.

"You were dead," Miranda said in her mellifluous voice. "For two years. We, that is, the Lazarus Project, brought you back. Everything was replaced, made healthy again—perfectly capable of doing exactly what you're best at…saving humanity."

_You were dead. _"I…we…died in the atmosphere?" _Of course. Nothing else could have happened. One doesn't _live _through gravity's wrath, not even ones who have lived through so much death and collapse and vitriol. _

"Your bodies were reconstructed."

_Your…oh deities, oh stars and star-makers we're like husks… _Shepard lay the pads of her fingers against her scarred cheek—and it was disgusting how familiar her skin felt, even with the scars. It was just skin. She didn't know her own body any more, but it shivered with her fear. What might Cerberus have done—what might be lurking?

Maybe they made her more timid, because she couldn't stop thinking about how she didn't want this body to die. The part of her that said _I am frightened _was fighting to emerge, fighting to make her try to reject her very body. _Think of something else, anything—the galaxy….out of all those people, though, they chose me._

"Why me?" She lowered her eyes, looked up at Miranda.

In the opposite jumpseat, Miranda evenly stared. "You were the first human Spectre. You changed the galaxy's view of humanity. People will be loyal enough to you—or frightened enough of you—to join your cause. The humanitarian cause."

Shepard wasn't sure whether she should feel burdened or honored—both were taking back seat to creeped out and reeling.

Next to her, Joker leaned forward. "My turn. Why _me_?"

Miranda's expression never wavered. "We could have used anyone, although you were particularly well-suited. The Illusive Man insisted that Shepard match her original form entirely. No improvements, no kill switch. You are an accessory, Mr. Moreau, albeit a useful one. For any more information, I think it is best that we wait until you can see for yourself. Cerberus has a station in the Horse Head Nebula. When we reach it, more will be revealed, if the Illusive Man agrees."

The shuttle hooked onto a relay and shivered with the travel. Shepard knitted her fingers together, saw Joker staring at his knees. He started to say something, looked up at Miranda, stopped.

"Don't be afraid," Jacob said. "We're on the same side."

Joker scoffed. "I'll be sure to remember that when the plague of zombies starts."

The ride just got more awkward from there.

The docked with a blue-silver half-moon of a space station surmounted by docking arms. Inside, in an office looking out over the girders of the docks, Miranda settled down behind a desk as comfortable as a cat, while Joker took a seat and slung his arm across the back. Shepard stood with her arms folded.

Shepard said, "Alright, you've got us here. So let's talk about Lazarus."

"We will," Miranda said. "But I am going to leave most of the explanation up to the head of the project. The Illusive Man will be available by hologram in the communications suite. But until then, I will tell you that there is a threat to all of humanity..and you, Shepard, were the best person for the job."

_I don't trust you,_ Shepard wanted to say, but thought that Miranda would reply _we don't need you to. _They'd brought her back from the dead. Who knew what they could do to keep her there.

Miranda continued, "We won't control you directly; I know that's no way to gain loyalty. But Mr. Moreau has been given some genetic modifications…" She glanced at Joker.

His eyes went wide. "Wait, what?"

"Take a look." She slipped a keycard into one of the computers on the desk and turned the screen around, bringing up a record Shepard would have had to crane her neck to read.

Joker scanned the record, twitchy. "…This isn't right. Regeneration on this scale has never been possible."

"Cerberus has been researching the human form for decades. We know things that don't get out."

"What is it?" Shepard asked.

Joker pushed the screen around, and she quickly scanned the lines of text. It was medical, that was sure…but about what, she wasn't sure.

"Commander, it's a treatment for Vrolik syndrome."

Shepard blinked.

Miranda continued, "There is serum on Cerberus' station that will counteract the disease—for a month at a time. If you, Shepard, or anyone under your command interferes with Cerberus's plans, the treatments will stop."

_He gets cured as long as she keeps him that way. _Joker's expression was complicated for all its slackness, but she tore her gaze back to Miranda."You can't use him to keep me in line."

"Yes, we can," she said."Unless you are very different from the woman whose records we have on file."

Shepard gritted her teeth. Miranda was right; Shepard couldn't sit by while other people were hurt, couldn't let others be hurt for her—_and that just has to make life harder, doesn't it? I was willing to die for him. I'm not willing for Cerberus to pit me against him._

Miranda was as calm as an android. "We have our resources, Shepard, and you will not find it unpleasant working with us. The Illusive Man will tell you exactly what we're up against. Mr. Moreau, if you stay, I'm sure we have something to discuss."

Shepard was eager to know this mission she had been…created? revived? for--why the pro-human organization would recruit someone who spent most of their time as a Spectre in the company of a krogan and a turian. But what could Joker be thinking now? She paused before leaving, looked over at him. "I'll talk to this Illusive Man when I'm ready."

"It would not be wise to keep him waiting."

"Just give me a moment. Joker."

He looked at her with an expression somewhere between quizzical and determined. Maybe he foresaw her concerns and didn't want to talk about them; maybe he shared them.

He followed her to the short hallway outside the office, matching her stride. There, closed off by walls on three sides, he put his hands in his pockets and she tried to block away rushing memories of being trapped in her vac helmet watching him fall, memories of …it had been waking up in a half-formed body that she'd dreamed of.

She didn't know how to start talking about anything; this would be so much easier if she could just pick from an array, snap a targeting reticule down over the right thing to say.

To her relief, he started. "Un-freaking-believable…" He slapped a hand against the wall, eyes wide. "I'm okay."

She was full of thoughts, she was full of _I saw you so still_. "And am I thankful for that…"

"I knew you just couldn't go through life without such a competent pilot."

She can't help but smile—but it faded fast. "But—the Vrolik's. If you don't do what Miranda wants, you relapse."

He leaned against the wall, muttering, not really looking at her. "Ah, if _you _don't do what she wants, actually."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. They shouldn't have…"

"Shepard…this is a lot. I'm going to think it over and have a drink. Preferably one that ends up with me lolling around the place like a krogran in bloodrage."

_Oh to sit down and forget, or at least organize the remembrance. _"I'm with you there. If there's anything I can do—"

"You're always worried about somebody else. Worry about yourself for a bit. Get somebody to look at those scars."

Her hand flicked to her cheek.

"I'd say 'that's an order', but…"

_How can he do this? It's like he's masking something, winding fear around with words so that it's hidden from sight. But in the last desperate moment in front of Sovereign I heard him say _"I can do this,"_ and saying it made it so. Made all the pieces fall into place._ She shook her head_. _"I don't know how you do it…".

"Long years of training. Just know that I'm not going to turn around and shake hands with Cerberus if you don't trust them. You didn't have to save me back there."

_In that one bright/dark moment I was ready to die for you, and what if it had been Kaidan, what if it had been—_don't break down. Can't break down. "Yes I did. You're part of the crew. I don't believe you'd do anything to change my feelings about that." Her stomach roiled. She couldn't make this sound like it was alright, it wasn't alright—(She hadn't eaten in two years.) "Am I wrong?"

"No," he said finally, "you're not."

He started walking back toward the cockpit, and she followed. "We fell through a whole atmosphere together. That counts for somethin'."


	3. Freedom's Progress

III

"No, no, go ride off into the sunset. It'll be a great sacrifice for me to stay here in the air conditioning."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure. Shoo, shoo."

"If I find anything really interesting, don't come crying to me—"

"I think I've had enough interesting for, I don't know, a decade or so."

"Bye, Joker."

"Bye, Commander."

Shepard climbed up into the shuttle behind Miranda and Jacob, her weapons pack strapped securely to her back. Freedom's Progress, the first site of human abduction that they were going to investigate, waited out among the stars. Every once in a while, the pain hit her hard and slow—the Normandy gone, Garrus and Tali and all of them gone, left frozen in her mind as if they'd been put in stasis two years ago. In the short time they'd been on the station, Miranda wouldn't let her communicate with anyone.

She'd put a bullet in Miranda's back if not for Joker's cure. And if not for shooting crewmembers being a royally crappy (but extremely satisfying) thing to do.

She would content herself with imagined, irksome revenges.

And who knew what Joker had been contenting himself with lately. He'd shut up about the Vrollik's, gone the "don't worry about me" route again. Don't pity; never pity. But he'd been slow to speak, slow to smile. The revelation was hitting him, and she didn't know whether he was going to cave in or hit back.

She'd never imagined this. She'd gotten used to him, like a shadow by her side. Now, going into enemy territory with Cerberus agents meant her back was exposed.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stepped into the shuttle. Inside, with the door shut and the engines humming, she undid her bun and put it all up again, needing nothing to get in her way. She had to concentrate during this mission. They had some Collectors to drop.

**Crouched next to **Shepard behind a crate, Jacob knocked one hot-glowing clip out of his pistol and chased it with another. He leaned out over the crate, sighted, shot an incendiary that recoiled back to rock his knees against the dirt.

The bullet lodged in the heavy mech's abdomen and exploded; fire billowed from between bone-white struts. Shepard targeted the torn-out innards and ripped at the mech with her own gun, shivering the metal body. It continued, one silver leg stomping forward.

Shepard dashed across the courtyard in front of the blast doors, tracking fire across the mech's burnt-out chest. The sun of Freedom's Progress glinted off her armor as she ducked down behind the pile of creates Miranda had chosen for her own. The ground behind them furrowed like from lightning strikes.

Shepard thought, _I guess one part of my plan -- wear orange armor because my enemies can probably see heat signatures anyway—is working. It hasn't gotten me hit so far. _The armor's second purpose—shock value -- would have to be tested on living opponents.

She leaned out again, fired. The mech took another expansive step, close enough that she'd need to track up to hit it again. Behind where the leg had risen, a body arced on the ground, moving. Shepard got it in her sights and zoomed.

It was one of the quarian team, alive but slick with blue-black blood.

"Miranda! Cover me."

"Shepard, wait—"

Shepard ran for the quarian. Miranda grabbed at the back of her suit, missed; Jacob leaned out from behind his cover and poured bullets into the heavy mech, most of them pinging off. Shepard skidded to a stop and crouched down to turn the quarian over, to see if he was alive.

And something glanced against her back.

"Get down!" Miranda shouted. Suddenly the white jumpsuit filled up Shepard's vision as Miranda pushed her onto the ground—burnt armor flakes puffed up as Shepard's back hit the dirt. Then she saw Miranda's hand raise and clench, saw a mobile turret on a perimeter ledge explode with spark-yellow and biotic-blue. Behind them, a crackling groan and a crash sounded; Jacob had finished the mech.

"What in the galaxy were you thinking, Shepard?" Miranda's lips curled. Shepard crawled a few feet to lower her ear to the quarian's facemask, heard no breathing or ticking of moving air. The man had stopped moving; the dark blood darkened on the ground and stained the side of Miranda's jumpsuit.

Shepard got to her feet and extended a hand to help Miranda up as well—which, as expected, the other woman refused. She said, "I couldn't let him die."

"He's dead now."

"He didn't die alone."

Miranda and Jacob arrayed around her, twitchy to move off. Shepard hefted her gun and followed them, head lowered toward the double doors. Miranda had just gotten even more creepy in her eyes. How to broach it when she had also saved her life?

Slightly sarcastic kindness sometimes worked. "Thanks for protecting me, Miranda."

The operative didn't look at her; just kept walking, her hair bobbing. _Doesn't that get in her face? Mine does, and military regs made me chop half of it off._

"You are important," Miranda said after a moment. "You just need to know that along our journey we'll encounter people who are not. You can't save everyone."

"Everyone's important. You're just not willing to pay billions of credits to give them another chance."

Miranda said nothing; her closed expression was easy enough to read. Jacob gave a worried look that tried to be sympathetic. _He could be a lot worse. _ But Shepard strode on ahead of them, toward the doors to Tali's teammate's hiding place. Shepard was already _in _this situation because she'd wanted to help Tali, one of her best friends from…before. And she'd nearly gotten killed. Her armor was scarred—

And it had been stupid to turn her back on an easy perch for an enemy.

Was putting others' lives before her own just not smart?

The doors opened to reveal Veetor the missing quarian, sitting before a bank of screens, washed in orange and rust-red staticked light. Back to work.


	4. SR2

IV

Shepard watched the atmosphere fall away in wisps and the ship before her rise like a planet. Joker cursed, awed, under his breath as the sun glinted off what was revealed, what Cerberus had provided them. After Freedom's Progress, Miranda had said they would need a new ship, for a new mission. But this, lurking there in the darkness of the drydock…

She took in glimpses; thought at first it was the Normandy back from the dead. A sleek-beaked warbird floated with four low-slung engine-wings still and folded, and at the same time as it was glorious it was an affront. Two years it had taken to build, while to Shepard it felt like the Normandy had been in flames days ago. Already it had rebirthed itself. She fought the urge to gape, felt herself thinking of being adrift—new body, new ship, no ground to stand on!

Joker spoke, quiet and rough. "Maybe Cerberus isn't all bad…they saved our lives. Let us fly."

"It needs a name," Miranda said.

Joker's expression tightened. "Normandy."

*

Shepard breathed in deep as the airlock cycled from red to green, wanting her next breath to take in the pure essence of the ship. She heard Joker comment beside her shoulder.

"Ah, that new-car smell…"

The door opened. Shepard strode out beside Miranda, boots ringing on the gantry, determined to look confident. The hallway was dotted with crewmen who kept about their business as their new commander passed, intent on their screens. At the end of the hallway, the command center contained more people..and more memories the unfamiliar crew seemed to trod on. _I'll get to know them, _Shepard tried to reassure herself. People in black and white uniforms walked around the room, talking in low tones, while others monitored the central hologram of the ship. Shepard stared around, unable not to be impressed by what looked like the efficiency of the crew. It was new to her, but…they seemed ready to go.

Miranda's heels clicked as Shepard followed her toward the galaxy map. "Welcome. The computer AI will help you find your way around. The shuttle is always accessible for planetary landings…and if you are to disturb me in my office on the crew deck, please let me know in advance. Look around, and settle in. We have a long trip ahead of us."

Joker said, "Settled in—don't tell me you got a shiny new pilot too."

Miranda turned from leaving, looked over her shoulder. "Of course not. Your place is waiting for you."

"All right! Commander, if you don't need me for anything…"

"No. I mean…" _Will he get angry if I ask him if he's okay? Heck, we've gone through too much to go getting angry at each other. _"You okay?"

He rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. "Yeah. A little wierded out but I'll be fine. Go enjoy yourself."

She gave him the tight-lipped _you're not telling the whole truth _look and he turned away with an unnecessarily dramatic sigh.

_He's okay. Somehow he's always okay. Always looking on the bright side of things._

She let him go. She toured the ship, getting to know the crew. They were going to go through war with her; she'd better give them the closest thing she could to a good life outside it.

**There was something **sitting in the pilot's chair.

Okay, it wasn't sitting in the chair. At all, actually. It was perched on the side. And it looked like a blue bowling ball with delusions of grandeur. But he found out soon enough that it was a rival for the chair.

And it said, in a passably feminine voice, "Hello, Mr. Moreau."

"Eh? Nobody calls me that."

"I am EDI, the onboard ship intelligence. I will assist you in any tasks not requiring manual control, and monitor the subsystems."

_Whoa. _"They install AIs to help their pilots now?"

"Only on large military vessels needing many subsystems—and only on the most expensive models."

"So Cerberus sent you to look after me."

"Oh no. Do not think that I was tailored to you. Your presence is irrelevant to my integration with the ship."

Was there actually a note of scorn in that not-really-a-voice? Was there some sneaking niggling Cerberus thing?

Probably.

He tried out "We'll see who's irrelevant." as he sat down. The computer did not seem programmed to respond to personal attacks, as it said nothing.

Joker ran his hands over the arms of the chair. Leather, cool and scaled as lizard skin. No copilot's station here; it made the cockpit seem warmer, more intense, like the beak of a bird. It was his flight school dream come true—somewhere quiet with the whole body of the ship in reach, its heartbeat tolling out in softly glowing lights all around him. His own fancy little world.

But it wasn't the Normandy, and wouldn't let him forget it. The console wasn't quite set up the way he was used to; he had to look at buttons before pressing any.

He thought, _you don't name ships after dead ships. It's bad luck._

But this didn't _feel _like a new Normandy. It felt like the old one…just like he'd been hoping. Just like its name had prophesied. It had just gotten its scars patched and healed over, and was so ready to go again, so eager to fly, that it shivered in its moorings.

Scar-craters dotted the backs of his hands, had marked the curved peaks of his commander's cheeks.

_ Everybody's going to make a big deal out of this. Expect me to start running laps or something if I haven't got the Vrolik's. They underestimate the all-powerful force of my laziness and hermitry._

But didn't it feel nice to know that walking around the ship wasn't a chore? Didn't it feel nice to look at himself in the mirror and see something he could _control?_

Oh yes it did.

He'd slept in the pilot's chair of the first Normandy more times than once, not wanting to deal with the hobble to the crew quarters and people offering to help him. It hadn't been _comfortable _in the chair all night; he'd fall asleep to thoughts of the soft hands of an asari working at the ache in his neck. But it was nice for a few moments when he opened his eyes and saw that the lights were still there, space was still there, heard half-awake chatter at the gunnery stations and smelled their coffee.

Then there was that one moment that he couldn't be sure if it was a dream or not, when in the morning the commander stood next to him with a hand out like to touch his shoulder.

But he'd been three-quarters asleep and half his vision filled up with his hat, and she'd (in the dream-thing) turned and walked away. In the _actual _morning Shepard had showed up with a coffee and a mission briefing, and everything had been back to normal. Okay, as normal as it could get on a ship with Wrex on it.

It wasn't going to get that normal again, not if his relationship with this Normandy started with him _dying. _It couldn't get much weirder even if he did get up and do laps.

He spent a few minutes arranging consoles, checking readouts; re-checking pre-flight checks. Some of the technology was new, but that was basically restricted to the heat sink stuff he already knew from weapons. A mass accelerator core didn't really change. And without somewhere to go yet, he wouldn't be able to test out the systems as much as he'd like. Feeling like he didn't know anyone on the crew that he was talking to, he pinned down an intercom button anyway and gave the 'all-clear' announcement that it was his privilege to give. "Everything is running hot and glowing green."

A light flickered in time to Shepard's voice. "Thanks, Joker."

She must be touring the ship and hadn't secured the comm; other voices followed, one with an Earthling accent. "It'd be running hotter if we had a FDA coupling."

Then, a girl; "Ken! Don't bother the commander."

"Engineers," Joker grumbled. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

"If I find one I'll be sure to pick it up for you," Shepard replied. "I want everyone on this ship, from you two to the cook in the mess to Joker in the cockpit, to feel that you can trust me to help---because I can trust you to get me what and where I need."

"We won't let you down," the girl said as the man muttered grumpily in the background and Shepard remembered to turn her two-way comm off. Joker cut his end of the connection, settled back into the chair and pushed the footrest up.

She trusted him.

She always threw herself into trust, or distrust; always kept her opinions strong. _Good luck, Miranda. _And so because she'd worked with _him _so much, talked to him so much, there was a trust there that started its least manifestation at she'd pull his butt out of the fire any time.

It was naïve, the way she threw herself into bonding with people, but it was nice.

"Hey. Er, EDI. You. Thing."

"I am here, Mr. Moreau."

_Argh, gotta stop caring that it calls me that. I don't want it getting familiar either. _"Don't touch anything while I'm gone." He kicked the footrest down, lifted himself out of the chair feeling…light. Feeling loose.

EDI said, "I am hardwired to many critical systems. Touching is not an entirely accurate metaphor."

"Whatever. I liked it when the Normandy didn't talk."

"Nor am I technically the Normandy."

He started down the gantry. "Night night, EDI."

"Good bye, Mr. Moreau."

Glaring as if the AI were right in front of him segued into having no room at all in his thoughts for it as he headed for the central elevator. He _had_ noticed this before, when he woke up from…from Lazarus: nothing ached. There was always an old break; stiffening, paining. Now…nothing.

Of course, then, he'd quickly been distracted by the psycho mechs.

Now, he felt full of energy. He could walk circuits around the ship and look like he wasn't about to collapse. (And of course they'd gotten rid of the stairs so that he couldn't flaunt it--) Next shore leave he was, well, actually going ashore—next shore leave he was _dancing. _

He passed Miranda in the command center and felt suddenly doused in her ice-queen demeanor. She hadn't given him this cure out of the goodness of her heart. It was, with some trimmings, a bribe.

And Shepard wouldn't want him to take it and let it control him—would she?

He had no idea. Maybe she'd want him to do what _he _wanted. But she always brought such gravitas to situations—and he couldn't pretend it didn't sound important even to him. What if she was trusting him to stay with her in distancing the mission from Cerberus' other, less savory goals?

He swore under his breath, looked over his shoulder to see if he'd gotten an eyebrow raise out of Miranda-- he hadn't. He headed for the crew quarters to see what kind of living arrangements they'd set him up with—and maybe to find some stairs.

**Shepard did the **rounds. She talked to Jacob in his lab, the engineers below, Miranda in her swanky office, the cook and the gunners and EDI. Everybody. And they distracted her from remembering why she was here.

But that night (or so they called it; she dimmed the loft's lights but the silver in the viewport above her just kept glinting), Shepard lay between crisp sheets and nightmared about falling. She heard the sound of oxygen escaping her vac suit and woke up gasping, sucked in the rich, sterile air and lay there just feeling gravity hold her down.

She'd thought she was comfortable in space. She'd grown up in ships; always slept with wire-coils hanging above her bed like a mobile. She liked to hear the hum of a ship in the background of a conversation. Some said that solid ground seemed safer, but she didn't think so; it couldn't _go _anywhere. Didn't have anywhere to run.

It wasn't thoughts of home—any of her homes—that were going to keep her roiling thoughts down. The memory that let her sleep without seeing the dwindling, burning Normandy on the inside of her eyelids was more a sound than a thought, more a fleeting glimpse than a settled pattern.

_"I don't believe you'd do anything to change my feelings about that. Am I wrong?" _

_ "No, you're not."_

And that space-dark, sun-bright shout in her ear—

_"Shepard!" _


	5. Omega

V.

Shepard gazed down at the galaxy. EDI had dotted the map with orange indicators; planet-names and personnel files. Miranda had forwarded her dossiers and suggested a first stop--the constructed world Omega. There was a scientist there, eking out a clinic in the diseased slums. Not a medic, no; Chakwas needed no rival. But Shepard needed all the knowledge about the Collectors, and the world she'd been dead to, that she could get.

And Miranda had not-so-subtly hinted that this was a good place to begin.

Well, the adventure needed to start somewhere.

Shepard pressed the pad of her finger against the tiny hologram of Omega.

**The asteroid looked** like a jellyfish floating on its side in the black, lit from below by its own lurid red spines of light. Joker locked onto a dock and slalomed the Normandy through the metal stalactites and the occasional traffic, feeling the yaw. Slight list to port, slight shake at forty-five degrees. Nothing dangerous—just quirks, just moves to settle into.

He settled the ship in beside a rust-red gantry, saw the green indicator flick on as the docking clamps fit snugly down onto the Normandy's smooth sides. He flipped triggers and heard the ship settle down around him. Somewhere electricity still ran, keeping lights on and air flowing, but the engineers would be able to see that the drive core was asleep.

He leaned back, drawing energy in with his breath for a moment before—

EDI spoke up. "The commander would like to speak with you in the armory."

"You scared me there. Almost forgot I wasn't _alone_."

"I will monitor the ship and be here when you return."

"I know!" Joker stood up.

He jogged out to the armory, gave a quick nod to Jacob, who leaned against one silver wall with a weapons harness crossed over his black-clad chest. Shepard was armored too, the plates failing to entirely disguise the curve of her hips.

"What can I do for you, commander?" Joker asked.

Her lips curved up. "I've got a present for you."

"I hope it's tasty."

She swung open a closet door set into a bulkhead. Inside were ranked suits of armor propped up in metal brackets. She pushed some aside, swinging one to the fore while Jacob watched and folded his arms.

She said, "This one's for you. If you want to come with us."

The suit was dark green and looked uncomfortable, but he couldn't look away from it, not when she was offering him a step up from shore leave—a mission into the bowels of the universe just like Shepard usually took. From what he heard over the comm, her trips usually ended up slightly less dramatic than the average 21st century movie…and with better acting. He'd wondered what being out there was like a couple times.

He was automatically going to protest. He was going to say 'Just what I wanted; gunfights and gang leaders and alien bugs,' but banter was too roundabout now. (She'd try to convince him, try ' and new scenes and new faces and shopping centers', and he'd say 'You should tell that to a _people person'_ with that lazy sort of disdain he was so good at….)

But he looked at her and said, "Sure!"

She smiled. "I'm sure there'll be gang leaders and geth and…"

"Get outta here." He unhooked the armor from the rack, noticed that it was held together by clear plastic clips over a black weave.

Still smirking, Shepard made for the door, Jacob marching after her so stiffly that a salute was practically implied.

**In the command **center, Jacob looked at Shepard out of narrowed eyes. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Picking up Solus shouldn't be too dangerous."

"With all due respect, commander…no. Never mind."

_He's so formal. And yet I need to justify this—to myself too. _"Jacob, I pick people to travel with me because I want them there. Yes, I consider necessary skills and important connections, but I also pick people I …like, that I feel relaxed around. Like you…and not like Miranda." _Okay, I'm still not sure about you._ "And I feel that way about Joker, who wants to get off the ship and…you know…"

"Maybe he's healthy enough to walk. I hope he's practiced enough to fight."

The armory door hissed open. Joker gave a sheepish smile, his shoulders bowed under the green plating, a bone-white, snub-nosed assault rifle slung across his back. He folded his arms and with some difficulty gave a passable impression of Jacob's stony expression.

And just as Shepard had hoped, he'd found the hat. There'd been a box of them in the armory, and she'd noticed that they matched the SR-2 flightsuits like the one she wore. She'd picked the black-and-white uniform because she didn't believe in lording rank over people and because she'd liked the pockets. But it was an unspoken rule of the crew, it seemed, that no one cared about wearing the hat. Joker would have had one already if he hadn't gotten his flightsuit from Lazarus ; Shepard only had one because she'd found it in the back of her closet in the loft. It looked like Miranda had commissioned the ship, even the uniforms, long before Shepard had enough of a body to wear anything.

She understood a bit of how Joker might have stood out in flight school; he managed to look rebellious by following orders to the letter. On him the SR-2 hat looked jaunty and crisply-new.

"Is that regulation?" Jacob asked.

"Cerberus has regulations?"

"Let's go," Shepard said.

**She walked soft **on Omega. Ignored at the door due to Aria's blessing, she and her squad slipped into Afterlife. The hellish lighting in the entryway seemed intentionally ironic; sweat slid cold from her neck to under her collar as she skirted the club's central hub. She'd never liked clubs. Too many people could recognize her from newsfeeds here; the asari dancers reminded her too much of the batarian slavers who prowled her home colony, picking off young girls when they could.

She would talk to Aria, find Solus and Archangel, and get out of here.

The interspecies chatter hummed low beneath the piping of canned music.

Shepard glanced back at her squadmates as they ascended the stairs to the dais where this Aria was waiting. Jacob looked stony as usual; he was dependable and honest, and she liked that about him. Even though he was sworn to Cerberus, he was sworn to her too.

Joker, on the other hand, hesitated at the bottom of the stairs with a hand on the railing. "Hey, commander. Why don't you go talk to the matriarch, and I'll stay here…scout around, you know…" He looked up at the dancers.

She raised an eyebrow. "The squad sticks together. Eyes in front, flyboy."

"Aw, commander…"

Jacob raised a hand to snicker behind it.

Shepard snapped, "You're not the only one who's glad you're no longer breakable." She snagged Joker's armor by a ridge of chestplate and tugged. He nearly tripped up a stair, caught himself on the railing, and skipped a step to flank her, chuckling.

"I'm not sure that sounded like you meant it to…"

"Yes it…"

The blush warmed up her cheeks and swept to her ears like sunlight.

Supremely not sure what to say, Shepard composed herself before poised, feline Aria, trying to push the fact that her squadmates were a pair of comedians into the back of her head—and trying not to think about how, despite how impossible it was for her to keep tabs on Joker all the time, that unexpectedly violent tug was a passable attempt.

**Shepard switched out **Joker for Miranda when she learned that there were a crowd of mercs between her and distributing the plague cure. She watched him walk away, seemingly without a care in the world, and resisted asking him whether or not he was going back to the ship. It didn't matter—he was a grown being who could take care of himself.

**Hours later, her** armor was scorched with the fiery trails of rockets from above and the rifle barrel tucked under her arm bled heat against her skin. Expressions hard, Jacob and Miranda returned to Mordin Solus with her to bring him the news that the cure was in the air. Mordin agreed to travel with them.

Back on the ship, Shepard showered the grit out of her hair. Vorcha blood flowed off, but it lead her to Lazarus scars flecked like fire. Her skin looked so bloodless pale, and she didn't want to think about how it wasn't really hers.

_Joker's got the same scars, _she thought. _The same furrowed cheeks, maybe the same stitch-tracks up his legs. _

She'd never thought of him as so physical before. He was always so still.

She hadn't thought about _anyone _like this in a long time. The last one…that had been Garrus, the first turian she'd ever been close enough to see the small scales behind the plates of his face and wonder what it would feel like to touch them.

Shower finished, she pulled her flightsuit on over her scars.

**Mordin was settling **in, strewing items around the lab table.

"Hello, professor."

"Commander Shepard." Mordin walked around the table. Shepard wondered idly where he had lost half of the salarian crest on his head. "Cerberus lab is well furnished. With cure distributed, work on genophage modification can progress. Collect Collector data, mission will progress too. Thank you for your help."

She folded her arms. "You don't mind working with Cerberus?"

Mordin flitted back behind the table. "A means to an end. Their goal, to stop Collectors—after this, worry about non-human rights."

"They're loose with human rights too."

Mordin's black eyes shone. "Ah, yes. You are supposed to be dead. How did they achieve…" He gazed at her, curious as if watching cells split under a microscope.

"I don't know. I was hoping you might tell me, actually." She found her hands wringing, wondered whether she would feel the weight if they'd put metal sheaths around the tubes in her heart. "I've never seen technology used like this. By anyone."

"Indications of extensive information network, employees and researchers, paychecks. Spacecraft, bodily reconstruction, knowledge of Collectors. Not invisible."

"And they've got a cure for Vrolik's."

"Hmm?"

"My pilot, he's got this bone disease. And they've cured it to get a leash on him; I'm afraid it's worked."

"Curious. Effective."

"Maybe you could help him."

"Examine disease? Examine _cure_? Could be quick. Distraction from genophage."

"Only if you want to. I can ask him to visit." She muttered, "He'll do anything I want except notice that I'm female."

Mordin's crinkled lips quirked. "No need to ask. He knows I'm on board, knows what I work with. He will come to me."

**Miranda was doing **all she could to keep Joker from knowing where she kept the cure, or even whether multiple doses were on the ship at once. She gave a syringe of it to Dr. Chakwas and commed Joker about it. She was another one of those people who insisted on the 'Mr. Moreau' thing.

Chakwas, on the other hand…" Just a moment, Jeff." She turned away to prep the syringe while he perched on the edge of a cold lab table.

"What's in this stuff?" Chakwas partially turned around, her eyes narrowed and almost brushed by the edges of her white hair.

"I dunno." He rolled up his sleeve.

"You're to take it every two weeks; it must act on porous tissue. Because the effect's active period skirts that by a few days you'll have to be cautious at the end of the cycle."

"Hey, if it's gonna work, I'll come visit you as much as you want."

She set the needle against his arm; he looked away as the pain pressed and deepened until he let a breath out in a hiss through clenched teeth.

"All done." Metal clattered as Chakwas dropped the needle into a tray. Joker rubbed at the sore spot with his left hand until Chakwas shooed him aside to apply a small medigel patch.

"Do me a favor," Chakwas said. "Take this to the professor in the tech lab." She held up a capped plastic dish with a few drops of liquid shining in the bottom. "He can analyze it there. This shouldn't just be available for you. People all over the galaxy could be helped."

"You sapped some?"

"Don't worry. It should still work."

He lowered his voice. "Miranda'll find out."

"Then we better hurry up before she does."

He nodded. Maybe Mordin could manufacture the stuff himself…that'd stick it to Cerberus.

But that didn't give him quite as much vindictive pleasure as he'd expected, not when he stepped out onto the command center and saw the relaxed, efficient crew going about their business and ignoring him. There'd be no ship, pilot, or Shepard without Cerberus.

Through the doors to the tech lab, Joker found Mordin with his head bowed in front of the viewport, looking at something green beneath glass. Joker set Chakwas' dish down on the table, and the salarian turned around.

"Ah," Mordin said matter-of-factly. "Pilot. Bringing the concoction. Never noticed Vrolik's when we met in the clinic. Cure does good job." He scooped it up in a three-fingered hand, held it up to his eyes.

"Chakwas told you about that?"

"No. Shepard." Mordin cracked the lid off the dish, slid it under a scanner on his table and activated his omnitool to interface with it.

"She was here?"

"Yes. Ostensibly for her, but she asked about you." He pressed an eye to the microscope, focused on it for a moment. "Interesting. Not biophosphonates; like stem cells but crystalline. Latch onto damage tissue, built it up. Need gene sequencer to manufacture without high risk of rejection."

"That means it can't be replicated."

"Not here."

"Hey…Shepard, she was concerned? She's never concerned."

Mordin kept his eyes on the sample. "She was very focused."

"Focused. Okay…" _Either she was focused on being jealous this afternoon, or I'm making stuff up._

"Her interest may have been interpreted as more or less than professional." Was Mordin _smirking? _Did he have any stake in this? Did that _matter?_

He groaned. She was the _commander. _Yes she was attractive and strong and reliable and—

What was he supposed to do?

Mordin said quietly, "Unless we are truly ready, assaulting the Collectors will be a suicide mission. Beware of regrets. They will always stay with you."

Joker was left speechless, left with the sense that Mordin had his own regrets.

"I will study this concoction further," Mordin said.

It was a dismissal. Joker went out, thinking of venturing out onto Omega while they were docked, but he did need permission to go on shore—and that would be wonderfully awkward.

Or he could venture down to the engine room and see what could be done about that yaw.


	6. Alchera

VI.

The next morning, Shepard pulled up Archangel's dossier on her computer next to the galaxy map, just to refresh where she needed to go to meet up with the mercenaries Aria had mentioned. But another message had come in through the Illusive Man's information network, a message that made her eyes widen and Kelly Chambers look to see why she was drawing in a sudden breath.

She stared at the message on her screen, reading again the encoded message from the Alliance clinical-sounding dossier from the Illusive Man, who...he couldn't be conceding to her. Couldn't be giving this just because he was being nice. He must have a motive-must want her to think he was thinking of her best interests. He could have deleted the message before it ever got to Shepard.

But that didn't matter. The Normandy ruins had been found, and …she needed to go back; to see what had become of her old friend. Setting up the Alliance's gaudy, half-moon memorial might give her some closure. To see what had happened to her ship…maybe it would tell her what had happened to herself in those forgotten moments.

And Joker had to know. It should be a quiet mission, a meditative one-and she didn't want anyone who didn't know the old Normandy to be there. But he had loved her even more than Shepard had.

She clicked the console off without exiting the message, unwilling to move it to the section where everything she'd read and forgot about lurked. Tentatively she walked down the gantry toward the pilot's chair, wishing she had a paper letter, some proof, to clench in her hand.

He turned around before she said anything, like he had mirrored screens-and maybe he did. "Hey, Commander."

"Hey, Joker. Ah, I got a call from Andersen. They found the wreckage of the Normandy." She couldn't help but lower her voice at the end, as if she was talking about a dead relative.

He paused ever so briefly. "Where, where'd she fall? You're gonna go check it out, right?"

" This world Alchera. The one…."

He looked away from her, away from EDI's lights. "The one where we fell too."

She did not know where she was supposed to look. Her eyes gravitated not quite toward him. He had the headset in today, the blue-grey clip of metal tucked beside his ear.

He said, "Sounds like a cheery vacation. Festive."

"I, ah, was wondering if you wanted to come with me."

He was still and silent for a moment. "Yeah. I'd like that. Give her last rites, you know?" He turned partly away to tap at the console, pulled up the miniature galaxy map and a tagged diagram of Alchera. "I'll take us to orbit."

*  
Normandy had fallen onto a world in winter. Puddles splashed under Shepard's feet as she walked toward the arch of the beached hull, looking around in awed silence at the other parts of the ship-a strip of skin here, sheared off complete to show the name; an engine nacelle here, blackened. She slowed her steps, watched the ripples still disturb the ground.

Joker's comm clicked like the sound of a shovel driven into snow. "I can't believe this much survived."

Shepard moved slowly over to the curved wall that gravity had thrown onto what it did not know would one day be her path. Blue-black expanses, barely recognizable as an engine housing, stretched toward the sky. She put out a gloved hand to trail her fingers along the metal, thinking of how many times this thick skin had withstood the cold of space. "I'm sorry…" she said, and the comm was open; she knew he could hear her, and it didn't matter whether he thought she was talking to the ship or to him. "I'm so sorry."

She wasn't going to cry. It was a ship, not a person. And tears would fog up her facemask.

She breathed, moved; trudged toward the open space in the epicenter of the wreck, heading for the bulk of the ship. She felt alone; couldn't hear Joker's footsteps following her until he caught up as she stepped onto the remaining metal floor of the command center. After the sky frosty-blue and open, the ceiling looked black and dust-choked.

Here, she could see the fire as if it were happening again. _Here_ burning brands had dashed crumbling off her armor, _here_ had been all smoky and yellow.

Somehow, it was peaceful now.

Joker eased past her and stalked up the forward gantry.

She followed at first, but hung back when he reached the pilot's chair. As she had touched the hull his gloved hands traced the frayed, bitten edges, flattened against it; he turned away from her to look at the featureless surface of the once-bright console.

"You did good, baby," he murmured. "You did good."

One tear, hot. And then she knew what to do; knew that they would get on without it but it was the right thing. She put an arm around his shoulders; he turned and got his arms around her, rested his chin on the top of her head. It was the right thing to do; she could hear it in his catching breath. She liked being able to press against him.

"Thanks," he said; they drew to arms' length. "She was such a good ship, you know?"

"It's the crew I remember when I look at her." Shepard gave a tight smile.

"You would," he said. "You always think of 'em."

"Them?" She tipped her head. "You're included."

"I know. Crew…" Abruptly he turned, retreated down the hall.

"Wait-what's wrong?" She jogged to catch up.

He stopped, looking lanky in his green-black armor. "Nothing. No problem."

_He's the only one who's always been there for me. Always. And oh did I like to hear his voice in my ear when we were going after Sovereign. But nothing happened. Nothing could happen. Military regulations. Vrolik's._

_Make me an asari. Make me someone who knows how to tell people how they feel._

Her mouth wasn't quite working. He turned so she could see his face behind the plas shield, questioning. _For all his wit he doesn't talk to the crew much, she thought. Doesn't gossip. He might not know what to say. Just like I don't, just like I-_

_Closest thing to romantic I'm going to get now is a headbutt. And he knows those have killed people. _

She took some quick steps forward and knocked their helmets together.

He raised his armor-scaled hands like he was afraid of her, but a moment later he brought them gently to her shoulders. "I suppose there's regulations keeping me from asking you out for dinner."

"There are."

"Would you like to-"

"Yeah." She just curled her hands against his back, shy at the same time as not being in any way afraid to look at him anymore. Theirs was always an informal relationship; this felt no different.

He smiled behind the mask, looked around at the ruined room. Silence as she thought of how unlike the disaster around her she felt. She'd risen from the ashes.

He said, "This is a little awkward."

She raised an eyebrow. "You think she minds?"

"Normandy? Nah. Her and me…" He leaned forward and she felt the click of their helmets meeting. "We've got this arrangement…"

She took his hand and lead him out.


	7. Archangel

VII.

Archangel's life had been getting easier lately, or so it seemed to Lara. Instead of doing business all over Omega, the turian vigilante had been slowly restricted to one district, one apartment block, one room. Lara could see his hunched back far across the foyer, steady in the sights of her sniper rifle.

The prickling fear on the back of her neck told her that he could probably see her too. There was a _reason _he wasn't shooting—bad angle, good day maybe. She'd seen him pick off two attempted infiltrators already; she wasn't going to play the hero and be the third. Her job for Commander Tarak, the Blue Suns leader, was simply to make sure Archangel was still there.

That task done, she hit the button that retracted the barrel of her rifle into its own folded casing. She ran at a crouch behind her chosen cover, a convenient half-wall. Down a lighted, sheltered hallway she was free to ghost back to the camp.

Lara was a slight, grey-eyed asari with purple skin and grey spots around her eyes that swept in a line of spangles over the top of her head. Her human ex-boyfriend had once said she was all the colors of evening; she said she'd never seen a proper evening on Omega. On the farthest balcony in the darkest district the nights here always had the red cast of drive lights over them.

In the Blue Suns camp, Commander Tarak stood beside a broken combat mech, grumbling to Warren Makis, a turian freelancer. Lara had always liked Makis; he had helped the Blue Suns out a handful of times, and although he was surely only doing it to get the credits for his loyalty, he typically had good information of a kind someone wearing gang colors wasn't likely to get. He was a nondescript man except for his height; he lowered his blue-tattooed beak to Tarak's head to whisper as Lara approached.

"Any news, Lara?" Tarak looked at her with his four bright eyes. Warren resettled, also watching her with an air of disinterest.

"Nothing, sir. He's keeping his head down."

Tarak hesitated for a moment, then said, "I have another job for you."

"Sir?"  
"The Normandy has docked on Omega."

Lara took a moment to remember why this was important, but then her breath caught. "That's the ship that won the battle of the Citadel!"

Warren nodded, and Lara continued with more confidence. "But it was destroyed…"

"That's why its appearance is disrupting things around here." Tarak replied. "Check it out. Every gang leader on Omaga will be wondering who's stepped into Shepard's shoes and whether those shoes are going to be just as prone as they used to be to stepping into everyone else's business."

Lara had been only a few hundred years old when Shepard died. One couldn't _not _ know about the battle of the Citadel. She knew Shepard's face from the extranet and remembered her as a hero who had been mourned. Who knew what it meant that her ship was lurking around Omega—but it certainly would cause a stir.

"I'll see what I can find," she said. She had contacts all over—one of them might've been at the right dock at the right time. It was _impossible _that the Normandy would be back from the dead…and you just didn't name ships after dead ships.

Warren handed her a data drive. "Here's the coordinates."

Tarak had booted up his clipboard and occupied himself with it, so it was Warren who said, "Good hunting."

Lara nodded to him and headed out.

_**Kelly is going**_to_ notice. I'm not Commander Shepard right now, I'm just Kendra, nervous and eager and…oh boy. _

So said one part of her. The logical part, the part most people saw, was jabbering away in the background, rearing its head for a jibe like _military relationships aren't easy—shipboard relationships are even harder. _ Shepard's parents hadn't gone out much, not that she could remember; time and resources were limited.

They were limited here too—that's why the Normandy was docked against one of the tentacles of Omega now. Miranda couldn't complain that Shepard wasn't keeping an eye out for the next squad member, or that anyone was breaking the regulation about going ashore unarmed.

_Quiet, logical part._

Joker was leaning against the side of the airlock with his green armor and a tight smile. _Nervous? Is he nervous? Oh stars I'm nervous—_but when she smiled back it didn't matter what she had planned were as they had always been.

He moved just a bit toward her, said, "Hey, I found this club on the extranet that's supposed to have good human food and an average of one gunfight per year."

"Sounds classy."

He looked slightly down at her. They were nearly the same height, although she'd never thought about that before; she was used to standing over him. He said, "Clubs are like Virmire; I hear it's nice when it's not geth season."

Virmire didn't hurt her anymore, not unlike the dull pale pain of poking at scars; she remembered consoling each of her crewmates and being consoled. She remembered that that's when Joker had said, _I want to be there when you take Sovereign down _and she'd said _every member of the crew is important _or something inane and avoidant like that. And she'd walked away, remembering the buzz of his name in her mouth as she'd said _I'm going to help Kaiden. Meet us at the AA tower, Joker. _The taste of a name Kaiden would have been loath to hear…

"We'll go back one day," she said as the airlock opened. They'd docked beside a walkway whose grimy, railinged windows looked out onto space. The people who walked by went about their own business without eye contact. Shepard walked to the railing and leaned to look out at the Normandy, at the yellow lights that looked so friendly in the vacuum. She picked out the softly glowing dorsal eye of her own room. He settled beside her, leaned his forearms on the railing.

"Do I ever remember Virmire," she said, leaving _like I was the same person back then _as justa thought battling at her tongue. "I remember you saying you'd meet us at the scientists' camp. I saw the ship out there in the breakers and realized you'd lied to me."

He scoffed. "I wanted to go lay on the beach too. But Alenko would have had to carry me or something, and I wasn't giving that man _any _quarter." Kaiden and Joker had always bantered, a mostly friendly rivalry. Shepard wondered where the biotic was now. She'd never expected to think of her time with him as halcyon.

"Kaiden…started so many rumors," she said. "It was the talk of the ship that he was lovesick."

"You told him there was someone else, didn't you," he teased. "Some dashing pilot that you just couldn't get out of your head but didn't know how to talk to and it was all very tragic."

"Actually," she said, "I did."

He turned to face her; the brim of his cap hit her forehead and there was this awkward moment where she laughed and he groaned and she couldn't stop laughing. She slipped her hand over his and squeezed, remembering how many times she'd wanted to do just that when her gaze flicked to his fingers dancing around the console.

"We'll go back someday," she said, "to Virmire, when it's peaceful."

He turned his hand to lace his fingers through hers. "We'll go everywhere. Pick a world, commander."

**Lara and her** contact, watching from the window of one of Omega's many hanging spires, wondered if she had the right person.

"You're sure that's Shepard?" Shaggy-haired human Nicole Benson folded her fishnet-wrapped arms over her chest. "I thought she was dead."

"So did I."

"I also thought she was dangerous."

Lara shut her eyes for a moment instead of sighting in exasperation. Nicole was a wannabe street kid from a middle-class family with gang connections way back. Unlike most greenhorns, she was surprisingly good at finding information and looking forgettable enough to escape with it. But she was—Lara could barely think it without laughing at the idea of an asari baby dressed in Blue Suns armor—only twenty years old. She thought danger was a thing that could be judged just by looking at someone walking down the street.

Lara said, "We don't know that she isn't. She's armed."

"She isn't doing anything. Just walking along with her boyfriend."

Lara began to move down the corridor, toward the orange-lit bar that seemed to be her target's destination. Nicole followed, adopting another pouty stance when she saw, like Lara had, that they could follow from above no longer. The bar was part of its own spire, with no windows above it.

Lara's omnitool blinked. She backed to the far side of the hallway so there wasn't any chance of someone seeing the glow from below. "Sir."

"Found the ship?" Tarak barked.

"And Shepard with it, or else someone's cloned her."

There was a long pause. Lara hadn't believed it either—she still wasn't sure she did. But Tarak wasn't known for showing confusion. "Interesting. Recruit her."

Lara blinked. "Recruit, sir? She's high-profile. This could be—"

"Warren got into Archangel's files. He's been tracking the Normandy too. There's a connection between them, and we can't wait for Shepard to stumble onto it _and _our stakeout."

And this _was _Shepard they were talking about. She tended to win—and if the Blue Suns didn't get her on their side, it sounded like Archangel would get her on his. Lara glanced aside at Nicole, who was indeed doing all she could to _not _look like she wanted Lara to get yelled at by the boss some more.

"Yes sir," Lara said.

**Auron was smaller** and less dramatically decorated than Afterlife, with a bar in one corner and a dance floor in another, all washed with blue and violet light. Joker angled for a table, but Shepard was feeling more like the spacer kid she'd once been than the warrior she was. To the spacer kid, the club lights were brightly beautiful and next to her was a man she'd thought she might have started to love when he told her he could make the Normandy dance.

She looked askance at him. "Let's dance."

He raised an eyebrow. "And I thought you were all business."

"I was."

Before she could decide not to, she strode into the first neon circle of dancefloor lights. She didn't know how to do this really, never did it much before; but she wasn't the only one with weapons adhered to her back in the place, and the music was close enough to human to have a beat. She moved, she stepped, she avoided an asari claiming the circle of light as her own.

Joker stood at the side for a moment, shaking his head, then he joined her.

He danced even worse than she did, but then what ever had he done but make her smile—even in a 'laughing at him' sort of way. And then he was close enough that they caught the same rhythm and went with it, arm-waving like the aliens around them. _How long until the crowd forgets us_, she wondered, and then he bowed his head to speak to her under the crashing of the beat.

" I like this," he said, matter-of-fact and cheery. "I like moving and not caring what's around."

"We all have to be careful about what's around," she said. The asari sauntered by. "Unless we watch each other's backs."

"I know." He paused. "Look, remember when…after the Normandy. And you said you were sorry. And I didn't understand what for. Well, now I do, okay? You were sorry about having to make me choose between Cerberus and you." He put his hands on her shoulders, although she could barely feel the pressure through the armor. "And I forgive you now. Because it's not really all that hard of a choice."

She was close enough that she could see the lines on his face, and it felt so natural to put her arms around him too, to draw him as close as they could get in the scale-shell shields. His spine, she thought, is somewhere under my fingers. Their faces looked so human-pale and bare.

She started to say things, started _thank you _and _I'm sorry _and _worth_, but words didn't order themselves into neat lines.

**He saw **confusion in her then. So used to stoicism, he saw another layer of her; saw tight jaw-muscles slacken. And he thought, _She never lets go of the professional mask like this. Oh, it's a mask sunk deep. But this is the skin underneath (I wonder if she's got scars like I do, not just across her cheeks-) and she's showing it to me, of all bloody people. _

**He leaned **closer and she leaned closer and at the last moment she kissed him on the side of the mouth, on the rough stubbled Lazarus skin. But he tipped his mouth up to hers and ran his hands through her hair fit to tear it, and she _pulled _at him, trying for closer, seeking with her hands for the warm skin at the back of his neck to clamp her palms around. And she breathed his breath as if to steal it all away, and she pressed her forehead against his and rested there. And they were no longer dancing.

He smiled without showing teeth, all bright eyes and hidden mirth at the corners of his lips, and he murmured, "Yeah, I wanna keep this."

She lay a cupped hand below his ear, stroked the chipped skin with her thumb. And he looked like all of the joy in the universe, and he lidded his eyes-

"Hey." It was the asari—blue skin, grey flecks that might be natural spots or tattoos. Shepard wasn't sure whether the _hey _was an interruption or an invitation.

Shepard flicked her narrowed eyes aside from the startled –_is he blushing?_—Joker to the alien. "What do you want?"

The asari muttered, "They say the shepherd has come back for the lost sheep."

Shepard felt Joker shift beside her, moving away to present more of a threat. She took a step forward and the asari took a corresponding one back, her even gaze saying that it wasn't fear that made her move—it was simply that she had business to conduct.

Shepard said, "And what if she has?"

The lavender lips quirked. "Then I have a proposition for you…the chance to catch a fallen angel, maybe."

She turned away, gesturing for Shepard to follow.

"Of course," Shepard grumbled. But she followed the asari aide off the dance floor. She gave Joker a questioning glance, but with a mostly businesslike demeanor he followed them off the dance floor. She stood straight and settled the brace of guns slung over her shoulders into a different position that didn't poke her back. Deep breath. _Back to mission mode—as my head is spinning._

But then as they walked around the club's centre to a table in the dimness, Joker slipped an arm around her waist for a moment and knocked their shoulder armor together, just a little _here I am_, and she felt clarity fall over her.


	8. Garrus

A/N: Sorry about the delay! I hate to be, you know, that person. I've been working on a couple other ME fics, which is part of why this is delayed. To make up for it, this is an unusually long chapter!

I have two new fic ideas, and would appreciate input on which, if either, would be more interesting to you. One is set after game 3, and involves married!Shepard and a lockdown on the Normandy. The other spans both games and is told as much as possible through dialogue over the commlinks, as well as including what I've come to affectionately call nerd!Shepard--a.k.a. the one in "Movie Night".

Plans are also in the works for the continuing plot of "Resurrection" (thanks, wordswithout), and it's looking more awesome by the moment. So I'll get to it.

* * *

VIII.

Everything was going according to Shepard's plan. Unfortunately it looked like it was going according to the Blue Suns' plan too.

Joker sat across the table from the purple-skinned asari, noting how calm she was while her younger, human accomplice looked like she was itching to have a knife to play with. Shepard had agreed to work with them to capture Archangel, knowing that it was safe to assume they were trying to get her killed along with him. She'd try to keep from killing any of them, if Joker knew her at all. Who knew what Archangel's plan was. Shepard had met enough mercenaries to expect gruff, practiced fighters, although it wasn't safe to assume anything.

He could never predict how the missions were going to go, and that wasn't his job. He just had to be ready in case things went bad.

Lara told Shepard to meet her at the gangs' private hanger for transit to the tower where Archangel was hiding out."I need to rendezvous with our scouts," Lara said, one side of her face shadowed and the other lit with blue neon light.

"I'll meet you there." Shepard had slipped right into military mode, professional and hard, and Joker did the same, as best he could while reeling. She'd really picked him. She'd really kissed him, let him kiss her.

Kaiden was going to kill him. But at this point, he thought it might be worth the fight.

When the astoundingly gentle-looking gang members left, Joker looked at Shepard across the table and couldn't help but gesture, fingers splayed as he fished for the right thing to say. "Well at least that didn't end in an _armed _encounter. You want an IOU, commander?"

She stood up; he did too but she moved to his side and sighed. "Sorry about the date. I hoped we would be able to avoid acting like responsible adults a little longer."

The tone was flippant, but the tired way she said it made him think somewhere she was serious.

"There'll be time," he said, and as a smile started to touch her eyes he realized it was true and couldn't help but laugh softly to himself. Then, "Pity this whole 'saving the galaxy' thing gets in the way. Somebody's gotta do it. Guess we're just that awesome."

The smile reached her lips. Its hesitation, as opposed to the absolute severity of the expression she gave the asari, gave Miranda, gave mostly anybody—was achingly cute.

They started out of the club, passing humans and aliens who curved aside without thinking about it to give the two some room. In silence they moved down the corridor where, Joker realized with a flare of anger, the asari might have been watching them since they left the ship. When the Normandy's dock came into view at the end of the dusty hallway he turned to talk to Shepard. "Want me to send Jacob and Miranda out? Then they can do their job shooting things, and I can do mine waiting to hear if you need to be picked up."

"Sounds good," she said. Then, "You know I'd rather it was you with me."

"I know." He grinned smugly. "Don't tempt me…but, you know, I don't wanna get killed. That'd be bad timing all around."

There was a quiet moment where they looked at each other, where he didn't know what he was supposed to do so he patted her on the arm and headed for the ship. He looked back once to find her staring out the grimy window with complex emotion in her eyes; a moment later they went hard and serious and he thought that she was going into fight mode. He trusted she'd always be able to come out of it again.

He made his way to the bridge, barely needing to think about where he put his feet any more. The skin around her scars was pulled and red, but he thought they had closed since she came back to the Normandy. She'd saved him in the devastating crash two years ago—who was he kidding, she'd dragged his useless carcass out of the one exercise they'd never covered in flight school. He could almost hear his least-favourite instructor now.

"_Your ship has been shorn in half by an unknown weapon. You've got enough gravity for the bridge, one malfunctioning engine, no oxygen, and a drive core about to give up its ghost. What do you do? Mr. Moreau?"_

He'd have come up with something involving latching onto the gravity of the planet and getting a boost out to where the ship could cruise along on its own power until it could call for a rescue….or something. Answers like that were what got him the name "Joker". _"It's rhetorical," _his least-favourite instructor would say. _The correct answer was "pray"._

Joker wasn't the praying type.

But the one time he'd been stuck without options, Shepard had come to save him, and after she'd done it the heavens had taken her. Looking at her now he had the sudden urge to repay that, to keep her safe like she'd kept him. Not like this was the old days—the world was far from chivalry and women giving their tokens to conquering knights. But _frak _if she didn't feel _important _to him, always had.

And she deserved more than a man created by Cerberus.

The Illusive Man might see his relationship with her as even more power over them, and Joker was _not _going to skip merrily into a trap just because the people who'd set it had given him permission to. What did Cerberus _want _from him? Or was it just from her?

He needed to talk to the Illusive Man. But first, he needed to man the comms and do what he could to make sure Shepard and the others came back from their mission at all.

**Shepard, Jacob, and **Miranda crept through an apartment littered with the bodies of Blue Sun mercs. Without the turian being able to know that they wanted him alive, Archangel's sniper rifle had burned a long, black streak across Shepard's shoulder. She pressed back against the stair-rail leading up to the contested rooms, scanning the debris-strewn courtyard as her teammates chose their own cover forward of her. She knew another mixed bag of mercs and krogans would be dumped on top of them in soon.

It did. They brought a mech this time too, a big silver-sided walker that sprayed bullet holes into the wall behind Shepard as she ducked away. Her hands hit the ground and she crawled a few feet behind a low wall, hearing screams and orders all around as the mercs organized themselves into neat assault teams.

The sounds faded into a background blur that it was hard to care about as Shepard propped her rifle on the wall and fired at the thick, silver tubes that linked the mech's back and neck.

Shots chopped at the wall around her, and in the orange ricochet-fog she caught a glimpse of purple. Shepard searched the hall behind the mech's scissoring legs, finally zeroing in on what she thought she'd glimpsed: the asari she'd met in Auron. She fought showing any reaction on her face as the other woman raised a stubby rifle and fired.

Jacob sent a biotic blast from the other side of the room that crippled the mech and knocked the woman off her feet with the aftershock. Through the red smoke of the mech's passing Shepard saw the asari cling to a half wall and aim for Jacob. One of her shots missed; the other got him in the shoulder. Shepard saw his biotic corona die.

Shepard took the asari out with a headshot. It was almost instinct, almost textbook soldier—_kill the guys that try to kill our guys. _Silence tried to crowd out her heavy breathing and the sizzling of the mech's remains. _It was quick_, she thought. _It was quick…_

Miranda called out, "All clear!"

Jacob held the glow of a medigel bath to his shoulder, his grimace turning to a curt nod. Archangel had gone quiet. "Move out," Shepard said, her voice sounding strained to her own ears. None of them had noticed the asari—no, none of them had been there when Shepard met her for the first time. She was just another merc who had been going to kill Jacob, and he would need to be tended when they got back to the ship.

That didn't make it feel right.

For now, she lead her team up the ramp. Nearly at the door to Archangel's hideout she saw movement on the ground and swiveled the barrel of her gun, but it was just one man crossing the room, headed for the asari's body. A turian with thin shoulders and blue tattooing, he held his gun loose in his fingers as if he didn't care enough to use it, almost as if he were ready to discard it. Shepard lined up a clear shot at him, and watched as he knelt by the body and closed the eyes of the asari.

Miranda muttered, "Commander…"

"Wait." Damning whoever invented gangs, Shepard hesitated.

The turian looked up, started, and froze when he saw her, his mandibles drifting.

She met his black eyes before moving toward the apartment door, rifle held steady in front of her.

**She looked later **for a chance to ask why Garrus hadn't shot the turian either, but realizing that Archangel _ was _Garrus took up way too much thought to leave room for spare. He seemed to have gained layers and shields of confidence since she'd first seen him standing demure on the Council promenade. This Garrus was gruff and dangerous. When he unmasked she opened her arms for an embrace, memories of their time fighting Saren flooding her, but Archangel sat there with his sniper rifle propped up against his knees and did not move to invite her.

There wasn't enough _time_, not when Eclipse came in and started pounding at the apartment. During all the fighting through the subbasement, the turian mourner never appeared again.

When Shepard returned from those claustrophobic halls, the asari body was gone and her right hand was aching from where she'd punched a krogan in the jowl. She was past the 'tired of fighting' stage into the adrenaline cloud where she started accepting that she was good at this and might as well enjoy it—except when a burst of blood showed how nauseatingly alive her opponents were. Mechs were different—husks and geth were different.

She was more than ready to get back to safety when her team regrouped in Garrus' apartment and she started to ask him whether he was coming back to the Normandy with her.

The shadows in the room changed, growing wider, unable to be accounted for by the room's furnishings. Shepard shouted for everyone to take cover as a gunship, small enough to take only a handful of crewmembers but large enough to combat aircars rose up from the lower stories. At first its engine sound was muffled by the thick walls of the tower, and then it fired its first shot and the glass shattered.

Backed by the engine drone, the second blastwas inhumanly loud, closing down around her eardrums like a clap. The ground shook. A couch toppled over in front of Shepard, torn stuffing piling up on the floor. Lucky break; it protected her from the third blast. Shepard felt her eardrums pop as she heaved a rocket launcher from her back to her shoulder. She fired, fired again, feeling her legs ache as she took the recoil. It was a small eternity until the gunship sank away into the towered distance of Omega and she stumbled to Archangel's side in the sudden silence.

She'd just started thinking of him as Garrus, and now he didn't entirely look like himself anymore; the blast that floored him had dug into and bloodied his silhouette, leaving his scaled skin looking chewed up and frayed. She reached out to touch his face, hesitated not wanting to get blood on her hands; instead she grabbed him by the armor shell and turned him over. His scale-less eyelids were shut tight, the visor sheathing his right eye flickering as electronics sparked. It seemed so _wrong _for him to be silent now after he'd guided them through the underbelly of Omega, after she'd recognized that voice under the anonymous helmet--

Footsteps clattered on the apartment floor as Miranda and Jacob hurried to his side. "Quick," Shepard ordered. "Let's get back to the ship."

**Doctor Chakwas cleaned **Garrus up, and Shepard met him in the infirmary. Jacob was lying down, quite conscious but also content to relax with a bandaged arm. Garrus, though, stood up and approached Shepard, wthe skin over his left mandible looking pink and raw. He'd refused either a medigel compress or a new ring of neck armor; there was the pride of the warrior in him.

Glad to have him on her squad, Shepard bantered, even egged him on when he mocked his own scars. At the same time as he had gotten more gruff and antagonistic, she also detected an embarrassment in his voice, like he didn't want her to compare what he was now to what he used to be.

"I've missed you," she said, and meant it.

"Glad to be back." He inclined his head, the crest on the back of his head looking sleek like the hackled nape of a bird.

She assigned him a bunk and a task and told Jacob to show him around, and was left alone with Miranda. The other woman gave Shepard an even, appraising stare from across the infirmary bed. (_Is she older than me? _Shepard wondered. _It's impossible to tell.) _

"Good work," Miranda finally said after a long moment of decision, and went out with her head held high.

Doctor Chakwas sat down at her desk. "He'll be alright if he takes care of that wound like I told him to. Which means, of course, that he'll probably be in here again every few days."

"Thanks for taking care of him," Shepard replied. She held a deep respect for Chakwas; the older woman was one of the most reliable and essential members of the crew, and felt almost like family.

"It's no trouble. It's nice having familiar faces back on board."

Shepard smiled. "It really is."

She headed for the door, but changed her mind and leaned against the wall before the door could register her presence and open. She spoke to no one in particular, knowing the comm would pick up her voice. "Joker." No reply. She moved to the small control panel on the side of the table and made sure the lights were green. "Joker? Hey."

EDI's blue avatar popped into existence on its shelf near the door. "Mr. Moreau is currently utilizing the communications suite."

"The holographic suite? Who's he talking to?"

"The code is classified…"

"Who's got permission to access it? Miranda? This is my ship, EDI, and I outrank her in all ways but—"

"It is likely that you will deduce the perpetrator anyway. Mr. Moreau is talking to the Illusive Man."

**Joker didn't use **the holographic suite often. The last time he'd used a setup like this, one expensive enough that it actually _tried _to make the user think they were going somewhere entirely new, had been…one identical to this, on Cerberus' station. He'd stepped in after Shepard had come out and explained about the Collectors, and the image map had risen up around him, solidifying from pixilated mess to the most dramatic office he'd ever seen. He'd nearly laughed at how dramatic it was. Except then the Illusive Man had managed to make the mysterious company-running, cigarette-smoking thing actually seem serious, because he'd name-dropped the Normandy.

Sure, everybody did; everybody knew Joker had flown in the Battle of the Citadel, and he wasn't going to disagree that that was all sorts of impressive. But Cerberus (the Illusive Man, Joker knew, was just a name—what this person really was was one head of Cerberus) had skipped being impressed and gone right to _you knew Shepard. You were there, and so it's right if you were there again._

And Joker had managed to think there might be some _hope _in those freaky eyes, but no—it was just the ability to be really, _really _good at telling people what they wanted to hear. Their meeting had been much shorter than Shepard's had been, much less full of information; he'd gotten no more than he had from Miranda about why and how they'd secured a cure for Vrolik's. He'd been surprised that this the third head of Cerberus had agreed to talk to him on short notice at all.

(Who were the other two heads?)

When the starry floor formed and the hologram was complete, the Illusive Man was sitting just as he had before, one leg crossed over another and the lit cigarette hanging between two bony fingers. Joker knew the burning planet behind him must be fake, that he must be sitting in a holo suite too—but it was enough of a distraction that it would probably stop most people from wondering where the Cerberus master was really hiding.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Moreau?" The Illusive Man's voice didn't quite echo, but almost.

"Some explaining. You've given me something and I owe you for it, but I'm not gonna believe you did it out of the goodness of your heart. Sir." The fact that no one was really present in the room with Joker, and couldn't enter it without EDI informing him, gave Joker a measure of courage.

The Illusive Man brought his fingers, wreathed with smoke, to his lips. "Humanity has to succeed as a whole before we can focus on individuals."

Joker knew that not only one question had been answered: he might as well have asked why Cerberus hadn't bothered to market the cure to the public, or why they saw Shepard as a figurehead who needed to be kept around. One big question _hadn't _been answered – why she needed to be controlled.

He doubted he'd get a straight answer, so tried for a roundabout question. "You know Shepard wants to beat the Collectors. That's gotta be in her records. And she needs me to fly this ship—not to walk. Why give me the cure if one lousy human doesn't matter to your plan?"

The cigarette tapped against the arm of the chair gave off a rain of sparks. "I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We need you at your best, and it was convenient that we could make that happen. And you _are _the best."

_Flattery will get you nowhere, _Joker thought, but that wasn't entirely true. Maybe they'd wanted a good pilot for dangerous missions and Shepard's loyalty to him was a side effect. But…that sounded like flattery. Joker wasn't getting any real information from the Illusive Man's responses, and that meant he was hiding something—something that it would take a sharper mind than Joker's to find out. It wouldn't do him any good to declare _"I don't trust you!" _ and storm off.

He tried changing the topic. "This cure. Where'd you get it? Why don't you market it for a profit?"

When the Illusive Man didn't blink for a while, Joker could see blue neon wheels turning in his flat eyes. "The technology is still being developed, and should be given first to humans like yourself, humans on the forefront of the fight. Ask Miranda for any updates."

He acted so _calm_, with that little echo to his voice, as if there was limitless space around him. A crisp arrogance poked through the words, and it was in the Cerberus operative's name like a dismissal.

"Yes sir," Joker said grudgingly. "Hey, EDI, shut off this session."

The Illusive Man's office faded into orange mapping lines and retracted into the floor as the familiar communications room of the Normandy seemed to reform. The sleeping heartbeat of the ship around him and beneath his feet was the quiet hum of life support. Shepard was probably looking for him; even though she didn't need to leave Omega to check off the next dossier on her list, if she was searching she'd go to the bridge first, and he wanted to be there—wanted to be reliable. It also didn't hurt that right now, with the Illusive Man's non-answers sorting themselves out in his head, he could really use someone to talk to.


	9. Sparring

IX

Joker was so focused on his conversation with the Illusive Man that he nearly walked into Yeoman Chambers and Shepard as he came out of the elevator onto the command deck. Shepard looked relaxed, occupied with telling Chambers how she'd first met Garrus. Joker waited for a way into the conversation, contenting himself with looking around the command center at the efficient attentions of the crew to their computers.

He didn't need to worry about anything on the bridge; docked on Omega, the ship was secure, and any incoming hails would be routed to the tooth-shaped commlink clipped to his ear. The crew were so settled, trusting that the ship wouldn't suddenly come under attack by something so unexpected they could do nothing about it. Joker's life had been filled with the unexpected lately; the collapse of the first Normandy lead to a joyful denouement as neat as the end of a story—the new ship, the miraculous cure. There was nothing he could do but live in the moment—when bug-eyed aliens calling themselves Reapers 2.0 teleported out of the sky yelling about human sacrifices, people had to take the fight as it came.

The problem was that somewhere, Cerberus was guarding the gates of the underworld and salivating as it watched the innocent little mortals walk by. It might be protecting them from the Reapers, but he didn't think it was preparing for a happy future either.

Grumpy Garrus, as a member of the old squad who had gone against Saren, felt like a cheery albeit deadly addition compared to the duplicitous Illusive Man.

"Garrus seems to have a lot on his shoulders," Chambers was saying.

Shepard replied, "I hope it'll give him some peace to be back here. He's changed…" She might have said more, but kept any diagnosis to herself.

"I think so," Chambers said happily. "It's certainly been helping you, commander."

Joker took the opportunity to approach the two. Kelly greeted him with enthusiasm. "Hi, Joker!"

"Hey, ah, Yeoman Chambers." He knew that she had only noticed him now, but Shepard 's greeting was a crafty smile that said she'd known he was there the entire time.

"How have you been?" Chambers asked. The young psychologist had large, clear green eyes; it looked like a smile had lit them up and never left, no matter what expression was set upon her lightly painted lips. "If you ever need to talk, let me know."

"He's got someone to talk to." Shepard got a hand around his wrist, her fingers not quite meeting. He started a little and the pincer grip unclenched. "Thanks for your help, Kelly."

"Don't mind her," Joker quipped as Shepard practically fled, dragging him along with her. He tried to get her to relax, partly in defense of his wrist which, disease or no disease, was beginning to lose blood flow. "She's just trying to spread some cheer before we all go back to defying death—"

Shepard marched on toward the bridge. "She's a good kid. But you're right to put _flirting with you _and _defying death _in the same sentence."

"It looked like she was flirting with _you _there for a moment—Commander. Ow."

"Ah. Sorry about that." She let go.

He stopped and massaged his wrist. "No big deal. Look, don't think I'm going after Kelly. I'm not going after anybody."

She didn't meet his eyes. "I shouldn't have minded. I don't outrank you in this."

"Hey." He took her by the wrist, gently, and escorted her toward the bridge again, trying to get out from between the glances of the crewmen at Navigation. "You're loyal. I knew that when I signed up."

"I'm not gonna kill her. Anyone. Promise."

"Whatever you say, commander."

They walked up toward the bridge, not touching any longer but close enough that the back of his scarred hand brushed against hers.

She said, "EDI told me you were in the holo suite."

"Yeah," he said, unable to keep the heaviness of the conversation from sounding like fatigue in his voice. "I was talking to the Illusive Man." He levered himself into the pilot's chair and woke up the console.

"Do I even have to ask about what?"

"He won't give me _anything._ He's not interested in giving the cure to anybody else, and while normally I'd be more than okay with accepting that he revived us to save the galaxy because we're just that awesome, I don't buy it. " He shrugged.

"I don't either." She lowered her voice.

He cast around in case someone unfriendly had entered the bridge, but no. "You think EDI's spying on us?"

"Could be," she replied thoughtfully. "Or I'm just paranoid."

"Anybody would be. We can't worry about it."

"You're right." She leaned against the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder at space or the console or the viewport struts; he couldn't tell. "We'll find out eventually. We have to."

"Well, we _know _the Illusive Man's spying. I just hope we've found out before he wanted us to."

He stayed silent for a time, enjoying the feel of her fingers against his shoulder. He'd had enough of grungy, crowded Omega for a while. It would have been interesting to visit its drive core, though; there must be a piloting station up there somewhere, controlling how the station's ring of fusion jets kept it floating upright, watching that it didn't drift into a chunk of asteroid. Now that was one tank of a spacecraft…

It would also be as ungainly and slow as the Mako in a snowstorm, and he'd rather have the Normandy any day.

He looked up at Shepard. "Where're we exploring next, commander?"

She thought about it for a moment. "There's a dossier for a Justicar on Illium."

"Justicar. That's like asari police, right?" He started setting the course.

"I think they outrank police but fall somewhere below Spectres."

"Ah, so she'll be like Garrus. 'I can solve this crime with the force of my badass personality.'"

He didn't mock people with the specific goal of amusing Shepard, or anybody, but her smiles were a reward of their own. He wasn't sure whether she understood that his snark was a sign that he tried his hardest to take in stride what might come next in life—what corner of a table he might bash his hip on, what crewmember might decide do something stupidly brave but end up miles off course.

Okay, some of his snark. Most of it wasn't that heavy at all.

She said, "Illium it is then, Flight Lieutenant. "

"Aye aye. Am I allowed to call you Kendra now?"

She replied over her shoulder as she left. "Go ahead, Jeff."

"See you, Commander. Omega Control, this is SSV Normandy…"

**Shepard collected enough **strays in her travels around the galaxy that, a few months later, the ship was starting to feel like a busy kennel. Samara and Thane kept to their meditative selves, but Jack or Grunt were always barking about something.

Usually everyone was holed up in their own rooms focusing on their own problems, so Joker got a bit of a shock when he emerged from the crew quarters to hear what sounded like a crowd cheering in the mess room. He hurried around the elevator column to see what was going on.

Joker was in a good mood; he'd just worked off any possible stress with some of the marines' weights, making up for the fact that there was nowhere to swim on the ship. Swimming had been his preferred method of exercise literally since before he could walk; there wasn't much else someone with Vrolik's could do to get their upper body to military standards. He was quietly, enthusiastically proud of the lifting aches beginning in his arms and shoulders. Besides that, Shepard had taken him up on the promise of an uninterrupted dinner, and on Illium they'd actually gotten it.

So he was more willing than he would otherwise be to join the crowd of people standing in a thick circle in the mess room. He saw Grunt, Jack, and the Scottish engineer cheering and waving their fists in the air. On the other side of the circle, Doctor Chakwas and Miranda, whom Joker thought he'd never seen speak to each other in his life, had nearly identical triumphant expressions. Gardner was handing a beer to Jacob. Beside the biotic, Mordin had a drink too but was looking between it and the circle with equal clinical curiosity. A trio of midshipmen jostled and cheered next to the table, blocking Joker's view of whatever was going on in its center.

Joker approached just as Engineer Donnelly answered his comm and started shouting back into it. "I'll be back in a minute, Gabby. Nothing's going to explode because I'm gone!" He flicked the comm off. "Woman…"

"What's going on here?" Joker asked. He raised an eyebrow as Grunt shouted in the background.

"The commander challenged Garrus to a bout. We're taking bets!" He moved aside so Joker could ease past him and a morose-looking Thane to the inner edge of the crowd.

Shepard and Garrus crouched low on opposite sides of the circle, slowly circling. Gray exercise mats had been laid out in a rather half-hazard manner on the floor. This was obviously not the first round: Shepard's forehead was shining with sweat and the top button of Garrus' tunic had come open to show the craggy turian collar ridge. Both wore thin, armor-weave gloves. She was wearing her pocketed pants and a black tank top that may or may not have been underneath the flight suit the whole time, showing off arms without a trace of excess fat. An orange-pitted Lazarus scar ran almost perfectly vertical across her left shoulder blade. Joker resisted reaching back to touch the one on his right.

The audience muttered and laughed to themselves. They got even louder as Garrus charged.

Shepard bent her knees and let him come. They caught each other by the forearms and struggled for a moment, her expression tightening down into something with bared teeth and flinty eyes. She was forced to stumble back, but a moment later she regained a step and pushed her hip against his stomach. He lurched forward with a huff, but had lost enough momentum that any throw she'd been trying for didn't work; he drove his spurred elbow against her cheek. The midshipmen winced, and Joker resisted entering the circle. This was probably the most fun Shepard had had in a long time. As long as…

She put some distance between her and Garrus, shaking her head, but there were no cuts or blooming bruise across her face. Of course the combatants must have arranged not to put each other out of commission. Joker wished she'd told him about this, for more reasons than one.

Shepard angled around to Garrus' back until she was almost in the middle of the circle and he was the one whose movement was limited by the spectators. The turian's mandibles were flared to allow deep gulps of air in past his ranks of sharp teeth.

His opponent darted in. They jabbed at each other for a moment; her shorter reach was obvious, but she stayed close, not letting him use the advantage. They traded hits to the arms, then Shepard feinted with a low punch and nearly knocked his visor off with a right hook.

Garrus retreated and readjusted the screen strapped over his eye. His nervous laugh seemed to allow the watchers to react as well. Donnelly called out, "Get him, girl!"

Shepard grinned with closed lips and a fierce joy in her eyes. Joker clapped. "Anybody got a camera?" he asked no one in particular. Jacob actually waved at him with a video recorder strapped around his hand. His other hand held a half-empty glass. Joker moved in his direction while the combatants circled again.

"Have a beer!" the biotic said. "Synthetically processed just like they do it back on Earth. She told me to film this. Said she'd use it for research."

"Sounds good to me." He didn't ask Gardner for a drink, because Garrus was attacking again.

It looked like he was trying the bull-rush technique he had used earlier. As she presented her profile to him to set up for a throw he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her toward him, teeth bared, for what looked like a skull-cracking headbutt.

She let him get millimeters away from hitting her before she reached up and grabbed two of the spikes at the back of his head. She pulled his head down toward her chest and just dropped, folding one leg beneath her as she planted the other knee square into his solar plexis.

Garrus flew over her head and landed hard on his back. Shepard's center of gravity had shifted enough that she was on the floor too, but she twisted around to get to his side with her hands up. He waved a talon in her direction; she took it as a feeble attack and went for his neck. He caught her hand in his, the claws caging her.

"That's enough," Garrus said, amusement in his voice. "You win."

The spectators cheered, as money started changing hands. Shepard pulled Garrus to his feet. Grunt grumbled about it being over already. Mordin, to Joker's great surprise, handed a credit chit to Donnelly. Gathering groups started to break up the circle, and Joker made for the combatants.

"You were good," Garrus was saying.

She smirked. "You nearly had me a few times. You were right about reach."

"And…was I right about an apt tiebreaker?"

Shepard's cheeks went pink. She started to say something, stopped, said "I don't think so."

His mouthparts flicked. "I thought…right."

_What are they talking about? _"Hey, Garrus."

The turian profile looked more human seen head-on. "Joker. You're looking…mobile."

Immediately on the defensive, he countered with the truth. "You're looking a bit disheveled."

Shepard focused on him. "Joker?"

"What? The scarring works. Makes you look more rugged..like you aren't about to be thrown by a human."

Shepard let Joker put his arm around her shoulders, and maybe that surprised Garrus enough that he didn't snap back. Joker felt inexplicably smug. This conversation had gotten tense really quickly and he wasn't sure how, but _something _made him want to make really sure Shepard didn't have a wrestling match with Garrus again.

"Looks like I've missed a lot while I was gone," Garrus said. "I'll talk to you later, commander."

Garrus stalked off before she could reply. Shepard's skin felt like it was burning against Joker's arm. "What was up with that?" he asked.

"Nothing." She stood still and wouldn't look at him.

"Yeah, right. You're trying too hard to look like it's nothing for me to believe that."

She turned to face him. Donnelly and Gardner were standing by the counter cleaning glasses and talking about military life in general and making good-natured jabs at Gabby through the comm in specific. They weren't paying any attention. Shepard pulled lightly at Joker's shirt and met his eyes. "I had a thing for Garrus, years ago. He ignored it, I ignored it, and then today he tells me this story about blowing off steam and tiebreakers in _her _quarters and it was really…quite…awkward."

"So…you try and beat him?"

"He said that's how turians work off stress. I haven't gotten to fight anyone without having the utterly disgusting option of killing them or being killed in a really long time. If he thinks it was flirting…well, he certainly doesn't think that now. "

Bringing the Kelly incident up right now wasn't going to help. "I could fight you." He pushed at her shoulders. "You might _actually _kill me, though, so be careful."

"I know when to be careful." She flattered her palm against his chest.

He rubbed her shoulders, wondering if Garrus' posturing was going to be the beginning of something unneeded. Shipboard drama was like a black hole; it pulled everyone into it. Even if you weren't in the middle you got caught up in the orbit.

"I'm gonna go clean up," she said. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll visit later."

They headed for the elevator, his destination the bridge and hers the loft. Until the door slid closed behind him he felt like Garrus' mismatched eyes might just be watching.


	10. Model Ships

X.

_ "Shepard and her crew…" _

Shepard turned the plastic box around, her thumbs leaving little white networks of cracks where they pressured the corners.

The label on the back of the box read _SSV Normandy SRI. The first ship of the Normandy class, she was built as a joint venture between human and turian corporations. Her stealth systems and boosted, experimental drive core make her one of the most advanced frigates in space today. Commander Shepard and her crew lived and served on this vessel during and after the Battle of the Citadel. _

Shepard couldn't take her eyes off the model ship, off the wingspan barely the length of her palm. She stood next to Mordin in the Citadel shopping district, the civilians around her ignoring her and the microcosm she felt like she held in her hands. "I can't believe they made this."

Mordin's voice sounded clearly over the background babble. "I find it easy to believe, even predictable. Marketing keeps the population's opinion of the military leaning toward the positive. Also, the attack is something many citizens lived through. Shared milieu, increased likelihood of purchase. Note the books."

"I've got one of the books." She raised her arm to show him the plastic bag looped around her wrist. "I know about milieus." She smirked. "It's just weird…someday they'll be reading about me like I'm reading about Anderson, in dry, life-leeching prose." _Shepard's story, on the shelf right next to Anderson's and Grissom's and World War II._

Mordin said, "Memory engenders comfort."

Shepard slid her credit chip into the automated teller and bought the model.

Tali returned from the next kiosk with a bag of her own, walking jauntily. Shepard remembered the first time she had come to the Citadel and been awed by the bustling crowds. "What have you got?" the quarian asked cheerfully.

"Model ship." Shepard showed her.

Tali took it in both of her three-fingered hands. "Model _Normandy_." She sounded happy. "I always wanted one. My father collects model ships, made them when he couldn't find any that matched the ships we saw in the flotilla."

"Really? You can have it, if you want..."

"No, commander," Tali said. The title sounded more like a nickname coming from her. "You keep it."

Shepard smiled. "It'll look good next to the Blasto poster and the pulpy novels."

She liked to think of Tali's father sitting at a faded metal desk putting models together, sealing wings from one ship onto the hull of another with paste and tape, showing his daughter what he'd made. They'd be patchwork wings, but hold together with all the love of a parent who wanted a planet for his child.

_ "…lived and served…"_

She sat on her bed and unwrapped the ship, cracking through the plastic with scissors. She'd watched ships a lot when she was young-big, silent, alien warbirds taking off and docking with whatever base her family was stationed on at the time. At the age of ten she could list more names for machines than for living things. Divots, drives, cowlings, grease and space-ice formed her vocabulary. For a long time after she'd had to lean the meanings of words they used on Earth: veldt, tundra, savannah, rainforest. Every culture had its own language, and spacers were a culture of their own as much as Eskimos were, with a thousand words for machines.

She'd learned the basic notion of ships from her father. Mass drives and engine kick could be understood without any math, but starships weren't like combustion engines; you had to know more than what dials to watch to fly safely. She'd learned first aid from her father too, how to stitch and set without medigel to seal the wounds. She'd been thinking of him during the last stage of Elysium, the siege. She'd stopped thinking quick, though, about how he'd caught something fast and deadly from a patient and died on Jump Zero.

Space was in her blood, was in her parents' blood when they chose to see the galaxy from two different sections of an Alliance warship. Hannah Shepard had extended both the open palm of peace and the closed fist of war during her posting on the SSV Einstein, and Kendra's great-great-something had been the second human in history to break out of Earth's atmosphere. Some old Earth poets had said that space wasn't meant to have people living in it. The Shepards weren't having any of that.

It was right, then, that Kendra lived on the Normandy now and didn't have a planet or a station to call her real home. It was right that she'd died breathing space in and it didn't kill her. It was right that she was in love with a pilot.

_ "…served on this vessel…" _

Miranda never said "thankless" flat out, but Shepard heard it behind her words. _My company raised and paid billions to let you live and breathe and eat. You still hate us. And they call me cold. _

When Shepard went to see how Miranda was doing she found her sitting at the table in the bedroom behind her office, barely visible behind the tech on her desk.

Shepard paused in the place she usually stood here, a few feet in front of the desk. It was marked out in mental tape as the 'Miranda safety zone.' "Can I come in?"

"What do you need, commander?" Miranda still sounded cold, but she looked up, propping her fork on the half-filled plate in front of her.

Shepard took that as permission to move around the desk so that she could hear better. She felt like an intruder, but glancing into the bedroom saw that it was as clean and empty as a hotel room before the occupants arrived. No secrets here, and no humanity either, just sheets tucked tight under the bed corners. "Just wanted to talk. We're having lunch," She pointed casually over her shoulder at the mess. "If you want to join us."

Miranda raised an eyebrow. "You're gesturing with a model ship."

"Oh. I know."

Awkward silence.

"Look, you paid for this ship. Like you said. I want you to enjoy it."

Miranda's eyes hardened while the rest of her expression remained passive; it gave an unsettling appearance of her being in strict control of herself. "You can't change whether or not I enjoy the company of soldiers and convicts…and one salarian who might almost understand what my work for Lazarus means. I have nothing to talk to them about."

_Them? You, she means. She's the snobby kid at the empty table._ "You're lonely."

"That's not relevant to the mission."

"Neither is shopping, but you've got to do it sometimes or you just go crazy."

"I appreciate that you're in a good mood, commander, but please don't expect me to catch it."

"Sorry." Shepard shrugged her shoulders. Miranda was hard work of the sort she didn't feel like tackling today. "I'll leave you to your empty room, then."

_ "…after the battle…"_

The forward corridor was still and cool as a cavern, computer stations sprouting in their grottoes. Most of the servicemen were in the mess now, leaving an unbroken fairy-ring of orange to mark Shepard's path. She tried to sneak up on Joker, but he had the home field advantage.

He reached up and back, trying to touch her face from an angle so awkward it looked futile. She crossed her arms over the back of his chair and leaned in to get a better look at his grin, the shopping bag pulling at her left wrist. "How's the old Citadel doing?" he asked, brushing at her chin. "Need saving yet?"

"Not from anything major. How're things up here?"

"Just got better, commander."

"I missed you, flyboy… Hey, were you born in space?"

"Well, I mean, I wasn't born _floating_, but…"

The pilot's seat was propped up today instead of reclined like usual. He'd been working on something, windows filled with vector maps open on the screen. It was easy as thought for her to orbit him, to fold her legs underneath her and rest with her arms on his knee. The shopping bag slithered from her grasp. His eyes widened and his mouth went slack with surprise until he leaned forward to tuck a hand against her jaw and under her ear, locks of her hair parting between his fingers as he proved she was real. His expression turned to something so sweet that it seemed to relax through her, leaving her blanketed with the comfort of just trusting her weight to him. Chiming and humming sounds continued through the bridge as they always did, but they didn't matter.

"Eh, what did you ask again?"

"Where you were born," she mumbled.

"Arcturus Station, most trafficked rock in the universe. It's in my records. If this is an official military interrogation, I'd love to see something more casual…"

"This is casual." She trapped his hand under hers and tipped his palm to her cheek, feeling the warmth softening her scars. "I was born on a station too. Visited Arcturus with the SSV Heinlein when I was thirteen. "

"I was a very different person back then."

"So was I. Maybe we met."

"We never would've known," he said after a moment. Maybe he was thinking the same thing she was, something she didn't want to say: that she'd been a lanky teenager who ran everywhere, no matter what safety regs said, and he was nearly housebound. Probably still ignored safety regs though. She rested her chin against the cloth of his uniform, rubbed against it like a cat claiming him. Now he'd danced and she'd been dead for two years.

He started playing with her hair again, loosening the strands. She closed her eyes, changed the subject. "Hmm. You should've come to lunch with us."

"Aw, there's all those people being…peopley. I like it up here where it's quiet."

She took his hand quick and stood up, pulling him with her. "But Tali and Mordin and I showed everybody all the stuff we got shopping--it was very domestic."

"Next time," he said. "Promise." He kissed her, lingering as she slipped her arms under his and snugged close enough to rub at the taunt muscles of his shoulders.

"I've got a present for you," she said after a moment. He watched as she bent and took the model Normandy out of the bag, holding it as gently as glass. He stroked its wings like she had, turned it around to look at the name on its curved, creaturely sides.

"Wow. This…this means a lot." He put an arm around her shoulders, kissed her forehead. With the ship in one hand he moved toward the end of the console, looking for a place to set it. "We'll give her a place of honor."

"Never forgotten." Left beside the chair, she leaned against the console, reverie of the past and the future nipping at the present. Her braced fingers touched the hologram, and it flickered. "Sorry!"

The screens retained their former state, but EDI piped up. "Please do not disturb the projections."

Shepard smirked. Joker did too, hesitating over the console before hitting a key she hoped was the mute. She watched his hands as he placed the model ship on a low strut.

"They had a Destiny Ascension too," she said, "I think I'll get it later. There's a case up in the loft that would be perfect to display them."

"Aw, you're gonna take her away from me, make her all pretty? My girl can take it down here."

"You could still see her." Shepard caught up to him and captured his hand, gently laced her fingers through his.

He turned to face her again, quiet. "Is that an invitation?"

She couldn't say anything, didn't need to-she traced the edge of his jaw to his hairline, remembering the smell of his skin.

He moved closer, hesitating to kiss her cheek, her nose. But he had that look, that sour _this just got complicated_ sadness. "Maybe."

"What…Joker, hey…"

He kept one hand loose in hers but moved around to sit down again, to glance at EDI and the screens. The other hand rubbed at his face in exasperation or fatigue, or…

_What did I do?_

"Don't worry about me. Just tired. Sorry, commander. Just…give me a bit."

"What…what's the problem? If there's anything I can do-"

"Nah. I'm fine."

_It's me, isn't it? It's Vrolik's or Garrus or Cerberus or_--She remembered that in her childhood, questions could be answered. "How does this work?" "Why are they fighting?" "Why are you crying?" Adults would give simple answers. "Momma's sad." "Daddy's had a long day at the clinic." "Well, a lot of krogans were having babies, and the turians saw that there would be too many krogans for all of those babies to be able to eat. So they made it so not all the krogans could have babies anymore." Why weren't questions easy now? What couldn't be distilled into speech fit for a child?

Shepard picked up the model ship, looked back at her pilot. "Okay. I'll keep her for when you visit."

"That's…that's good, commander."

She lingered, watching him not look at her. There was nothing she could do. It was the feeling of hull breach, of seals popped in her spacesuit and fingers just too small to hold the gap-- nothing she could have done.


	11. Communication

**Author's Note: **First, lots of thanks to **wordswithout** for her beta'ing and for occasionally contributing phrases and, in this case, a small conversation. She's useful, go check out her page. Also, hopefully this chapter clears up any confusion about what happened in 10. Shep was as confused as you readers.

This chapter marks the halfway point, thematically if not literally.

* * *

XI.

"_Argh_, Shepard to the bridge."

Kendra's hand darted to her earpiece. In front of her, Garrus' mouthparts twitched in the turian equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

"Joker. What happened?"

"Minor mishap. Like how old people fall over at charity dinners. Just call for Chakwas."

Shepard headed out of the gunnery station for the medical bay, Garrus following behind her. He was a reassuring presence, strong and reliable…but she liked that he stayed silent. She knew that he was loyal enough to have her in his sights and not shoot, that he trusted her to the death with all the strength in his stone-hewed bird body. It was when he started talking about why he was here, about _her and him_, that the stone started to crumble and she didn't like the look of what was underneath. Maybe it was him who was weak, for turning the wrestling match into a flirtation, or maybe it was her. But it was _weak_, compared to how efficiently they'd hunted together before.

Maybe "hunted" wasn't the right word and "efficiency" wasn't what should matter here, but sometimes she wished human lives were simpler, like varren. Live, love, kill.

**"Shut up, EDI!"** Slumped on the floor against the arm of the communication station's chair, Joker spat out a string of curses that would have been impressive coming from a krogan. Shepard lead hersquad of Chakwas and Garrus onto the bridge, armed with medigel and Miranda's miracle drug.

She sat down next to him, took the black-and-white hat from where it had rolled under the communications suite and pulled it over his head. "You okay? Doctor Chakwas is going to get you another dose."

He reached up, scratched at her leg for a moment as reassurance.. "It still won't work immediately." He pushed himself to a sitting position, grabbed onto the arm of the pilot's chair and pulled to get into the seat under his own power. She brushed a hand across his knee before standing up herself, quickly stiffening as she saw Chakwas and Garrus coming toward them.

To distract herself, she wondered out loud, "So…what are you doing down there, exactly?"

"Turbulence."

"I haven't felt any."

"When I say 'turbulence', I mean 'if that shrew of a computer module doesn't stop trying to correct my coordinates I am going to keep punching at her until I hit something that isn't the floor."

"Can't you over-ride her corrections?"

"Doing so would be flawed," EDI chimed in. For a non-sentient computer system, she could sound pretty damn prim when she wanted to. "My corrections were necessary. Mr. Moreau's directions were off by point five inches, which, over time, could lead to catastrophic drifting effects—"

"EDI," said Shepard, "Shut up. Commander's orders."

"Don't worry about me," Joker said. Then, louder, "Hey, doctor, you're a sight for sore eyes. Who knows what would have happened without you."

Chakwas was all business and a handful of needles. "Roll up your sleeve."

Kendra moved backwards to give the doctor space to administer the dose and examine Joker's ankle. She hadn't talked to her pilot since he'd steered off her course and ignored all hails last afternoon. She still didn't know what was wrong, what he wanted her to do. His independence was one of the things she liked about him, but now it mean that she had no idea what he was thinking or if he minded her simply asking questions. She sighed.

Garrus' voice growled in her ear. He tried to diffuse the situation, laughing behind his words. "You humans are so _fragile_."

She looked up and back at him, stepping away. "Don't…don't do that."

"Did I hit a nerve?" He was practically purring. Kidding? She couldn't tell.

Suddenly she was glaring; she couldn't help but be so _interested _in the turian muzzle, the ripped skin across the mandible--but she met his black eyes and was offended. "Yes, Garrus, you did."

His mouthparts flicked apart; confusion. "O-kay. Perhaps we should finish this conversation later, Shepard. Not here."

She folded her arms. It was the tension between how nice being with her squad mates usually was and how needlessly nerve-wracking it was right now that snapped like a wire. The words hissed out as she tried not to be overheard, but Chakwas and Joker glanced up; the doctor looked away.

"No, let's talk about this now. It's not your place to say things like that, not as a soldier or a friend." She whispered, "You told me it wasn't that you had a thing for humans. Maybe I had a thing for turians, and I'm so frakking sorry…" They were all looking at her now, so she gave up on whispers. "I'm sorry if that made you think I loved you." She turned to look at Joker. She'd never told him before, but there was deep worry in his shadowed eyes and it didn't matter. "Or that I didn't love _you_."

She turned away, started walking, maybe hoping that no one would be brave enough to follow her. Chakwas was; her presence at Shepard's side made it easier not to look back to see the others' reactions. She heard Garrus and Joker exchange terse words behind her.

"….That was unexpected." Garrus sounded stunned.

"Tell me about it. It's not that I thought she liked anglerfish…"

But Shepard could have heard that last bit wrong. Chakwas looked over at her, quiet and serious. She reminded Shepard of her mother in the times when Hannah was about to do something charitable and small, something as engrained in her mind as a mission briefing.

Chakwas said, "Jeff has always closed himself off from people. It's a defense mechanism, built up in a hard life."  
And walking away right now was making it harder, wasn't it? But he'd said he was fine. He said he needed no pity. Psychoanalysis wasn't going to root out the source of that.

Shepard watched Garrus stalk across the opposite side of the command center, a head taller than anyone else in the room, predatory in his blue-sheen armor.

When Kelly saw Shepard, the younger woman dashed away from her post. "Commander!"

"Kelly?"  
She said, "With all due respect, you're doing something that isn't good for _anybody._"She must have interpreted Shepard not knowing what to say as permission to continue. "Communication is essential to relationships."

"Not when it's screaming awkward truths."

"Especially then."

"I don't think he wants to communicate, Kelly."

"Don't give up yet. That's not like you. It's not like either of you." She raised a hand and gestured gently, her bright eyes fixed over Shepard's shoulder.

Joker stood halfway down the corridor, favoring his ankle and leaning on the back of each station as he moved.

"Don't lose what that's worth," Kelly murmured, but Shepard was already striding back the way she'd come.

**Joker was not **a cautious person. He _hoped_ that the crews of most Mass Relays in the galaxy could tell he was coming by how close his ship skirted their singularities, how it picked up every watt of energy it could take. Under most circumstances, "most" meaning the ones he created himself, he jockeyed through the traffic lines on the Citadel and didn't care if it was a C-Sec officer flaring its engines in the spot next to him, he wanted to _race!_

Of course he had to be cautious sometimes, but brash tended to work instead. And now, the one time he'd tried to be cautious to protect her( Shepard, Kendra, his commander, his…_love? She didn't mean that like…people don't say that. You've been watching too much crap on TV. Face up and tell her you made a mistake and then maybe she'll talk to you again, not to mention anything else.) _

The one time he'd tried to be cautious to protect her it had driven her away. So he was going to explain—and he wasn't going to tell her what he planned to do next, because that was _brash._

She met him where he stood, concerned and quiet.

"Blast it, Shepard, I'm sorry. "

"It's fine. I just want to _understand…"_

He went quiet. This didn't need to be overheard, but it couldn't wait until he shuffled back to a chair either. "Look, Cerberus didn't fix me up to make us happy. They're waiting for something, and maybe they've got a control switch to flip somewhere, but maybe it's just…me. You got yourself killed because I wouldn't leave the Normandy before, and I don't want you to get killed or do something that's not you to keep me safe now. The closer we get, the more power they've got."

"But that's…I'm not _afraid_ of that. I'm not thinking about that, and I bet you're not thinking about that, you're just such a _cynic_…" She hovered around him. "Get back to a seat. You're walking on a busted ankle."

He turned within the circle of her arms, neither of them touching, and started heading back toward the bridge. "Cynicism saves lives."

"That's not how love stories work."

_There's that word again. _"I don't believe in love stories—_you _don't believe in love stories, commander! I know that. People who are, really, really in love get blown up and lost and…not in love any more, all the time."

"I'm not naïve, Joker, I just refuse to believe that being good means being stupid. Cerberus could kill us all tomorrow, anything could kill us all tomorrow and it wouldn't matter—and I'm not a damsel in distress, to be manipulated while Miranda presses buttons. I'm a damsel with a big frakking gun, mister."

He was drowning his own arguments, in _she's worth too much to lose, _in _it isn't true that people can't fight what they can't see—and we can see Cerberus just fine. _

He said, "So I'm sorry. Permission to continue being an idiot, commander? It might happen again. I hear that happens in love stories." He spun the pilot's chair around and sat down again, looking up at her.

"Not granted." She leaned on the arm of the chair, studying his face. "The idiotic things you do tend to save lives. Just…I said I miss you out on missions, and I do. I missed you yesterday, too, and I was right here. Don't do that to me. Kelly said relationships were about communication, and they're about responsibility, and…"

"And you'll shoot me if I make you angry?" He could barely get the words out, not because she was probably going to say yes and mean it, but because…he knew he was going to make her miss him again, but then if everything went well he'd be cured and there'd be one big problem gone, and Cerberus couldn't be any angrier than they were now, because they recruited people they _needed._

He wasn't sure when he'd decided to find the cure and not take Shepard with him on the mission, but it had been some time when the strongest emotion he felt had been love—had been wanting to make a better future for a pair of people who might not have much of a future anyway.

It was dangerous, idiotic, and probably brash.

"I'm not sure," she said. "I was angry yesterday, but I wanted to keep you alive."

"Thanks, I needed to hear that."

She sighed.

"Come here." He needed her to understand that he just wanted to keep _her _alive too. He took her hand from the chair's arm, pulled her down to him for an embrace where he could support her enough to prove that whatever he did next was for her.


	12. Stealth and Reconnaissance

Splattered with husk-blood and grit and the goo from one of the thousand _things_ she'd killed in the last few hours, Shepard ducked down behind one of the projections on the Collectors' hexagonal hover platform. Jack and Garrus shouted back and forth beside her, making plans to concentrate fire on the platform that had docked next to them. Shepard leaned out and sent a splattering of bullets into one of the gasbag Collector creatures, bracing to run in case it tried the biotic aftershock that had knocked her off her feet too many times today.

It wavered, black goo peeling off its gelatinous sides. Shepard stood and ran, working her away around the projections to get another shot and kill the thing. She felt so exposed out in the open, but couldn't risk thinking about anything except this moment. It felt as if the ship were a lifetime away, a holo from someone else's album. The gasbag detonated, and she ducked just in time to avoid damage from its biotic death throes, a wave of bile coating her helmet. The black blood, coagulated from whatever its original color had been, seeped into the scaled under-weave of her armor.

She felt an almost agoraphobic desire for a shower. But she kept going, and somehow every creature that rose up before her, Jack, and Garrus was cut down.

The mission went on in a blur occasionally sharpened by organized group tactics that sent husks fleeing, even as more swarmed to reinforce them. After the mission she was left with vague memories of the squish of a husk's secondhand collarbone buckling under the heels of her hands as she rushed it in desperation before backing into a crack in the wall and popping medigel enough to force her mind away from the bloodhaze crowding her eyes. She moved back into the hall and regrouped with the others as EDI lead them around the blocked doors. Shepard dashed through the cavern halls as husks crowded the team, seeming to emerge from every corner—

She'd been listening attentively to EDI's status reports, so she felt a small lurch when Joker's voice crackled through the comm instead. "Get out of there, commander; we're taking hits with debris out here."

Her hand snapped to her headset like a salute, holding on as if she could feel him though the soundwaves and the metal warmed by the body heat of her temple. "On my way."

Finally the ranks were thinned. Shepard jumped over a husk body as she dashed up the ramp and through the Normandy's airlock. The silver walls felt alien after the honeycombed Collector ship, its tunnels slick with stone perspiration that she tracked in behind her.

Jack and Garrus leapt into the Normandy in front of her, boots shedding dirt on the black-glinting floor on the way out of the airlock. She knew she would be aching later, but now she just kept running, kept going on momentum: _must get out. We can get out. _In the command center she sprinted down the gantry faster than ever before and her palms slapped and tripped against Joker's chair. "Get us out of here!"

"Nothing I'd rather do, commander." She heard him over the comm as well as right in front of her, and remembered how he must have wrenched the channel from EDI, how he was the voice in her ear at the end…once of so many times. One of so many ends that narrowly weren't ends at all. He was already moving, reaching to drag power to the engines and angle the ship's nose up. The engines kicked in and detritus flashed past the viewports, smashing into rubble against the shields. The clouds fanned out in front of them, and then there was starlight.

EDI chimed, "Setting course for Mass Relay."

"Do it," Joker sighed. The console sprouted green autopilot constellations.

Then he stood up, and she moved to get out of his way but he caught her in a hug so strong that she had to step backwards, grabbing at the back of his uniform to steady herself. He touched his lips to her shoulder and she just tucked her head against him, standing straight because he was holding her up, listening to him breathe. _This is what I was waiting for_, she realized. _This is what I was running to._

"I can do this," he whispered. "I can watch you dive into infested hells and stay here. But I don't have to like it."

She kissed his cheek, said what she wanted him to say: "I'm not going anywhere."

He resettled and his next embrace pressed her back against the wall. EDI's light washed blue over his cheek but his eyes glinted _green _like she'd never noticed before, olive-green, and she pressed kisses against the closed lids and felt him breathing against her neck, just the touch of teeth against her neck. And "Wait, wait", she tried to draw away with her fingers tangled in his hair.

He tipped her jaw up with one hand, pressing forward. "What're we waitin' for."

"I need to go to debriefing." She sighed.

His face scrunched up.

"Then," she pushed the back of his head toward her to rest her sweat-cold forehead against his warm one. His hat had been dislodged a while ago; maybe that's why he looked so speechless. "We're having dinner in the loft."

That smile that she knew so well crept up. "Aye aye, commander."

They had dinner. They talked and laughed and put a movie on, and when she woke up he was still asleep and still coiled around her, one arm tight around her waist and holding on to her uniform as if for his life. She turn and ran a hand across his jaw, leaned her weight against him. _Without Cerberus, this would have taken a lot more thought. _

He groaned and smiled and opened those eyes. "Huh. It is you. Thought I'd been dreaming again."

"Again? And who else would it be?" She smiled, pushed a hand against his chest enough to make him squirm.

"Well, you remember Liara…"

She gave him a false smack on the shoulder and he pushed her back. She caught herself on the edge of the couch and tried to sit up but he kissed her cheek, and settled beside her with an arm possessively around her waist. He's got such knowing eyes, she thought, such certainty. But she could match anybody's mischievous smile, and she turned to kiss him like in Auron, to press her lips against the thin corners of his so he can feel the small muscles working. He just let her this time, just stroked the back of her head and lay there no distance at all away and smiling like his world was complete.

**His world was **crackling. It had been burnt-bones-dry, red at the splintered edges. Oh yes, he was _happy. _He went so far down into happy that he feared he'd never be able to back out of it in time and it would collapse on him, showing him that it was leading into ruin all along.

He sat up slowly. Her hand slipped across his chest, grasping like a baby, and curled beneath her chin. She was asleep, her eyes closed. The thin skin of the eyelids had a transparency, a little backlit glow like computer monitors. Her bared hands, usually hidden beneath gloves, showed in their pale contours the sinew roots of the muscles that corded her arms.

He worked his way carefully around her to stand up from the couch. When she opened her eyes and craned her neck to look up at him, he froze.

"And where are you going?"

_Come on, I can't lie to her. Did I really think I could sneak out? If we're gonna do this it's gotta be together. _He thought there was some justice in that. Cerberus fixed both of them, so both of them worked against Cerberus. Maybe it felt like justice, maybe revenge—sometimes it was hard to tell them apart.

He sat back down beside her. "Good morning."

"What time is it?"

"Time enough that people are going to start wondering where we are. Ship doesn't fly itself."

She sat up, stretched her arms out to the sides. "You're right."

"Usually am," he couldn't resist muttering.

She turned to him with a smile that twisted in his stomach like a sickness because he was too afraid to lose it. "Hey, Shepard. Remember that I told you I thought Cerberus was waiting for something, where we had to choose to listen to them or lose the cure?"

"I remember."

"Waiting around is for people with less resources than we have. I want to find out where Miranda gets the cure."

She tucked her legs under her to sit straight beside him, brushing a few strands of hair from her face and blinking. The sleepiness of her eyes attained a catlike deviousness—a mix of relaxed mode and battle mode. "I imagine you have a plan."

"Hack her computer. Shouldn't be too hard unless she's…in her office and awake."

"Then we find a time when she isn't. She shouldn't be the only one with the information," Shepard said. "Doctor Chakwas could do wonders if she knew how to replicate it." She started to cross the room, and Joker followed.

"Well I'm glad someone's motives are pure."

She turned and caught his hand, smiling. He saw a strand of hair tick at her eyebrow and wanted to brush it away. "Not entirely. I've helped everybody else on this ship with their problems, their families. It does more for me to be able to finally help you with this."

She composed herself in front of EDI's wall sconce and ordered the AI to appear.

"How can I help you, commander?" EDI fluted.

"Where is Miranda now?"

"Operative Lawson is composing a report in her office."

Shepard's brow furrowed. "That will be all."

"Goodbye, commander." EDI winked out.

"Of course it won't work _now_," Joker said.

"We'll find time," Shepard tucked her stray hair behind her ear and looked around the room, as if seeing through the walls of the ship to the joists and panels separating her from space.

**A day later **the Normandy was cruising in the vicinity of Illium, and the crew was still reeling from the Collector base. No one cared who crept off to sleep for hours—although the pilot didn't have that luxury, what with the crew wanting to be sure that the ship was hurtling in the right direction. Joker probably took that as a sign that he was the most important person onboard.

Which he probably was, Shepard thought. He was the only person that she knew for certain was awake now; the little light on the comm clipped to her ear attested to that. Maybe Jack or Grunt might be pacing rounds in Engineering, but no sounds floated up to the crew level, where biological rhythms told everyone to sleep. They were telling Shepard too, but she capped her yawns behind her palm.

The slippers of her casual uniform made only soft hushing sounds on the hard floor as she approached Miranda's office. The door opened and closed with no trouble. The darkness inside was nowhere near complete, punctuated by computer pilot lights and the red dome of an alarm on the inner wall. Shepard's eyes adjusted slowly, graying the black.

This wasn't like sneaking around Illium tracing Thane's son; if she was caught here, everyone on the ship would know. The Illusive Man would know.

She slipped an OSD from her pocket and approached the computer on the desk. A touch on the keyboard woke it up. Shepard quickly turned the screen around so that the light wouldn't shine into Miranda's bedroom. The bed almost looked unused, except for the bronze pull of the sheets where Miranda must be curled out of site behind the far wall.

The OSD couldn't be set to pull all available data; that would have set off a phalanx of alarms. Instead, Shepard looked for medical files manually.

There were hundreds, and they were almost all about the Lazarus project. She couldn't begin to understand what most of them meant, but some were straightforward enough to be guessed—biomechanical integration, culture growth, synaptic mapping.

She breathed deep, holding in the sound of her curiosity. She could find it all here—exactly how much they had replaced, what they had built. Had there been a glint of metal in her scars, beneath the blood-red of her cheeks seen, scoured and clean after her shower, in the foggy mirror?

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, sagging under the weight of the danger of taking the data.

She closed the window and was faced with the false eternity of Miranda's spacescape background.

The bedclothes shifted. Shepard opened Miranda's e-mail client, scanning for any messages that came in just before Joker's last treatment.

She found the name of the drug in a subject line and opened the e-mail. It was filled with formulae and measurements, mathematical symbols without the courtesy of a greeting or the name of the sender to break up the block of text. It was hard to imagine Miranda making the dose from Mordin's scrap supplies here on the ship, but it made sense. She was experienced in biotech, after all.

Shepard dragged the formulas into a word processor and shut the file away in her OSD. Just as she tabbed the disk out of the computer, she heard a footstep—just one, like two feet softly hitting the floor as someone got out of bed.

Had Miranda been moving around this whole time, with Shepard to engrossed in her work to notice? The room was still dark as night, cut off from the rest of the ship. Opening the door to let the undying mess lights in would be a sure sign of guilt now. Shepard shut the monitor off and turned it around, ruing the scrape of it against the desk. She backed into the corner near the door.

More footsteps. Miranda turned the corner dressed in a long shirt, one hand rubbing at her eyes which, sleepy, opened wide and bright to look around the room.


	13. Palaven

**A/N: **I was stuck on the first set of dialogue between Joker and Garrus for like a week. Creating a never-before-seen planetscape? Takes no thought at all. Getting people to talk? Gah I don't think I can do it.

* * *

XIII

Shepard pressed back into the corner, thankful that she'd chosen the black, jacketed formal outfit today instead of the crew uniform with its splashes of white. It wasn't nearly morning yet; the urge to yawn told her that. Miranda's eyes swept the room, the irises small and growing. She had the advantage, probably more so because she was genetically enhanced to adjust fast; Shepard's vision was still patchy from when she had been staring at the computer screen.

Miranda woke up the computer and navigated standing up, looking for something Shepard couldn't see. She blinked slowly, looking half asleep.

She gazed at the computer for what was probably seconds but felt like longer as Shepard, hidden only by the darkness, monitored the noise of each of her breaths and tried to think of a cover story.

Miranda straightened up and turned back to the bedroom, head bowed. Without turning the computer off she disappeared behind the wall. Shortly, Shepard saw the covers pull as Miranda lay down again, closer to the middle of the bed this time but not touching the beam of light cast by the computer.

Shepard consciously relaxed her shoulders, her breath, and the rest of herself in that order. She paused, curiosity warring with safety.

She would have to wait a few minutes to be sure Miranda was asleep before opening the door anyway.

She stepped around to see what was on the computer. From this angle the screen was blued and overlain with sheen, but she could see the shape of a face, the curl of hair. Oriana.

A few tense minutes later, when Miranda's breathing was even and quiet, Shepard opened the door and left.

**"Palaven," Shepard said** as she strode onto the bridge."The turian homeworld."

"Shh." Joker stood up with a finger against his lips. "Some _thing _ is listening." He hustled Shepard over to the airlock.

"You know, I don't think putting a wall between us and EDI is going to help that much. She can hear all the comm chatter just like you can," Shepard said quickly.

"Except she isn't as witty and handsome. But you're right. Keep it cryptic."

"Palaven. That's where we need to go. I found an email addressed to Miranda from a Cerberus base there. The information itself was keyed to deteriorate, but I've got an address."

"So how does it work? Miranda gets this data and builds the cure herself?"

"I suppose. She…she knows how our bodies work well enough." Lazarus skin prickled with gooseflesh.

"But to get that data we need to go down to the dirt. _Great._ Adventure time! "

"Garrus told me that the place he was from was…nice. Tropical, in the part he's from."

"Is the part he's from anywhere near the part we need to get to?"

"I'll check it out. Pull up a map."

"You get the map, and I'll tell Garrus that we're taking a vacation."

"You're okay with bringing him along?" She made sure to look into his eyes.

Joker nodded. "Yeah, no problem."

**Back in the **bridge, Joker called up the comm board and keyed in the midship gunnery station. Garrus was usually there—blasted workaholic didn't like to mingle with the common folk or something. Joker could have gone down there in person, but he thought it would probably be less annoying a floor away.

"Good morning, Garrus."

"Joker." The turian didn't sound surprised by the call.

"I hate to say this, I really do, but I need a favor."

"What is it?" Garrus growled. But then, his voice always growled.

_He doesn't hate me_, Joker reminded himself. _We just shared some really awkward 'get away from my girl' glances. That's relatively low on the scale of hate. No one's been shot at yet. _"Shepard is going on a mission on Palaven and needs a tour guide. Could you come with us? I understand if you're busy." He tried to keep the sarcasm to a maximum.

"Sure. Not busy at all. The guns can have some time to calibrate themselves."

Joker sat back in his chair, one elbow propped on the console. When Garrus didn't reply he left the line idle and smirked. _That was easier than I expected._

_ No chance the rest of the mission will go this way._

**Usually, Shepard used **a small comm panel on the door of the airlock to ask the people she wanted to accompany her to join her ground team. She could also call them from the bridge. She'd done that on the last few missions as an excuse to talk to Joker (to lean over his shoulder and press her nose and mouth against his hair, laughing as he tried to turn around and tried to sound tired of her while she stifled in the press of him.)

_What? Was I thinking about a mission? Yes. _

She squared her shoulders and set her sights on the airlock door. They had landed in orbit around Palaven and were headed for Kernade, a large turian city known for its beautiful landmarks honoring the city's spirit. Turian religion said that individuals or groups could have their own spirits, and Kernade manifested its resident one in a large mountain carved naturally and by artisans, a patch of wilderness in the middle of a modern city. A tree at the top of the mountain was known as the home of the spirit, and also served as a patriotic symbol for turian soldiers representing the city. Their branching tattoos reflected its design. The Cerberus base Miranda communicated with was located slightly outside Kernade.

Although Shepard was sure she wouldn't be allowed to just walk into the base, checking it out was the first step, and it wasn't uncommon to see people walking around in Palaven's militaristic society.

Garrus and Joker joined her, armed and armored.

The shuttle set them down in Kernade. Sunlight streamed down and set the tall, silver buildings ashine. Trees lined the streets where aircars swept along beside pedestrian turians. Shepard did not immediately see any humans or other species. _I cannot eat the food here_, she thought. _I cannot survive without imports; this is what it is like for Garrus all the time. _The air smelled faintly of the sea. Large white clouds had begun to bunch into storm-grayness on the horizon.

Garrus lead the two of them down the sidewalk, past street vendors stirring rice grains with their claws and businessmen whose suits gleamed with rings piercing their neck ridges.

"I grew up outside this city," Garrus said. "When I joined the force we would walk into the city for drinks. Some of us had never been before, farm kids who saw aliens for the first time here."

"Turians join the military in their teens , right?" Shepard asked.

"Every one of them, at fifteen. Public service is the way a society holds together. Of course not everyone becomes a soldier."

"I'm having trouble picturing you young and drinking." Joker looked over his shoulder, accentuating what Shepard was almost sure was a swagger. "Doesn't that break some law or something?"

"What exactly do you know about this planet, Joker? I didn't think its drinking age was part of your retinue of knowledge."

"I know Earth tried this public service system once. They were called Romans, and they did very well until this thing called history happened."

"History does not necessarily imply progress."

"Whatever. Just sayin', your people didn't invent uptight military snobbery." He mumbled, "That would be Ambassador Udina."

"So, Shepard," Garrus growled. "Any idea how we get inside this Cerberus base?"

"The usual way." Kendra looked around. Turian women with colorful beads entwined with their cranial spikes stalked across the sidewalk, as long-legged as human models. "We talk to people, see who's heard anything weird."

**Miranda sat down **at her desk and scowled. The signs were all there, written in code and time signatures. Someone had been looking at her extranet browser last night, and it hadn't been her. She could remember going to pull up Oriana's face, to banish the nightmares, as clear as day; the recovery was always clearer than the sickness of her sense of loss. No, she knew she had not opened any e-mails.

The sound that had disturbed her sleep had been a spy…and they had been looking at the e-mail dump with the cure. So it was one of her pet spies. She'd thought Shepard and Joker—okay, Shepard—would do this eventually. (No matter which one of them had done the actual sneaking, it had probably been Shepard's idea. She was the driven one.) They would find the Illusive Man, too, if they weren't stopped.

Miranda couldn't kill Shepard; she was too important. She didn't want to let go of Joker before he'd been useful either, but some things had to be let go in order to succeed.

Shepard was a good leader, and it was with some sadness that Miranda called in the mercenaries the Illusive Man had recommended to her. She heard boots clicking as crewmembers assembled for lunch in the mess as a turian face appeared on her screen. "Warren," Miranda said. "How many men can the Blue Suns spare?"

"Not many. Omega is chaotic."

Miranda pursed her lips. "It doesn't matter. I have a task for you…a paying task. It's also one in which you might have some more personal stake."


	14. Vengeance

_**A/N: **__This fic is not dead! Really! I just got distracted. But now that Halo has forced me into writing gunfights I have conquered that fear and can finish this up…just in time for ME3 to make all my cool ideas non-canon.

* * *

_

XIV

Shepard looked up at the holy tree of Kernade as the storm clouds above the mountain darkened out the mid-afternoon sun. Turian pilgrims, distant figures against a grey sky, followed the spiraled path to its peak. Some of them were vividly noticeable in the orange robes of Buddhist monks: many turians liked that religion's view of spirituality and had adopted it for their own.

"What do you think of turians adopting Earth culture?" Shepard asked Garrus.

He looked up at the mountain, flinty-eyed. "They can do what they like. But pacifism doesn't work when the war comes to you. I'm not a religious man, Shepard, but I believe our spirits are warriors."

As the group moved a few more steps into the city, Shepard's commlink chimed and EDI's voice intruded. "I have accessed the layout of the building you seek, Shepard. A local airtrain should get you there in approximately ten minutes. Note that the Cerberus base of operations is heavily fortified. I suggest a back entrance."

"Download the blueprints to my omnitool. Back way sounds good."

"She's going to tell Miranda about this," Joker said. "One query and we're done."

Shepard found herself looking up at the sky. She did this at least once a mission, a little bit of faux reassurance, wishing she could the Normandy up there—but now its comforting presence was an eye, spying on her. (And there was no reason to look now, really; she'd always been searching for Joker behind the Normandy's eyes, even if she didn't know it, and he was here now.)

"She has no reason to query," Garrus was saying. "Shepard snuck into her system. Ah, you were _very_ careful, right?"

"I took the simple route. No bugs, no tracers, just…opened the file. Unless she's more paranoid than I thought, she should have no reason to search." _Unless she saw me. Which, she didn't. Right? Right. _

"We're doomed," Garrus muttered.

"Hey!"

"Being doomed has worked out pretty well for us so far," Joker drawled.

Shepard said, "We'll be fighting Cerberus operatives here. If Miranda sends more we'll just fight harder."

**Warren Makis slouched** in the public shuttle's seat, idly weaving and unweaving his claws from around each other.

Nicole slapped his hands. His mouthparts jolted in surprise as the tiny human hand came down heavily enough for him to catch one claw on the soft skin below another. "Argh—"

"Stop being so nervous, oh scaly one."

She had been talking like this for the whole flight. He made sure to show some teeth as he replied. "I can't be as flippant as you about the person who killed Lara."

"Why not? We go, we kill, end of story. The fact that we get to take down Shepard is a plus. Everybody on Omega will be after a look at us…after our reproductive rights." Her smile was knife-thin.

_Shepard killed Lara._ Warren tried to repeat it to himself and make it stick. He missed Lara—he felt as naked and off-balance without her as if someone had cut off a leg or his fringe. She always kept him thinking straight, thinking about business.

If Nicole was trying to do the same thing, she was going about it the wrong way. Lara had never been sadistic.

Warren growled, "Lara understood that I'm in this gang because I need to be. It pays for the skills I have. It's not entertaining for me like it is for you."

"Is there a _problem_ that I like it? People are good at what they like."

He muttered, "You're bored of everything else because your family was rich enough when it got here—or enough in Aria's pocket now—that you've played all the games and tried all the food in the world. You're bored-rich, Nicole." His accent made it sound like 'Nikkorle'. "It doesn't make you special that you're enjoying this."

She hit him again. That little human hand, thin enough to bite through, rattled his armor. In the next moment she was straddling him, her fingers around his throat, her eyes hard and serious. "_Shepard killed Lara. _She's a stuck-up Alliance jarhead who thinks she's great because she fooled us all into thinking she was dead, thinking the world was going to be just a little bit darker, and…" She sat back in her seat. Warren, stunned, shook his head. Nicole said, "Now it's going to be."

Warren's mouthparts drifted in abject shock. He shook his head to clear it. _Shepard did make us all think we'd lost hope. There were rumors that there was some big bad _thing _out there and she was the one who was going to make it go away, and then…she died. And maybe something' s still out there, and she's…what did Nicole say? Sleezing around Omega with her boyfriend like a common person. _

He did not know what to say.

Nicole said, "You can grump all you want, as long as you've got my back when the time comes." She replaced her hand on the gun mag-tied to her hip. This is gonna be fun."

Warren flipped the flange nearest her, an almost unnoticed analog to a human raising an eyebrow. "Revenge is not fun."

Nicole smiled up at him. Her hair was edged with pink today; the fishnet crawling up her arms failed to disguise several subdermal tattoos that writhed when her muscles twitched. It made Warren a little nauseous to think too much about how pliable human skin was. How did they stay _together_?

Nicole said, "Revenge is the _only_ fun."

**The public train** took Shepard, Joker, and Garrus on a loop around the outskirts of Kernade. The closest platform to the Cerberus facility was deserted aside from them, the building visible as a curved silver shape in the distance beyond a wooded hill. Toward the sea the clouds were tinged storm-grey.

The train filled with commuters, rumbled off, and the three of them turned and unshackled their weapons. (It wasn't unusual to find armed people in a turian city; gun control did not exist in a society where everyone was a member of the military, and the crime rate maintained a low that would have astonished most humans.)

Shepard jogged toward the wooded hill. Garrus followed at a steady lope. Joker took his time, peering between the trees with the assault rifle tucked under his arm. Shepard was used to her squad following her at their own pace, but she worried about him. When she got a look at his face he seemed distant and discontent. The hat he wouldn't let go of, even on missions, shadowed his eyes so their color was lost to her again.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly.

He looked up, seeming to search the grey-penciled clouds. "Keeping an eye on our ship."

**Beyond the wooded **hill their path intersected a barely paved road vehicles used to get into the Cerberus complex. Like the research bases Shepard had found on many planets, this one consisted of a small building with two stories. Unlike them, it was backed by a power silo eight floors high, studded with office windows in places and shielded with thick, opaque walls on the part that she had seen from the tram station. The walls of the building bulged like an egg. Scrub grass lead right up to its door, but a dirt path had been worn in the sandy soil. The main road could be seen as a gap in the trees, curving up the gentler slope of the hill, but Shepard had lead her team in a straight line from the train station that provided exactly the back door she had been looking for. Cargo doors in the curving, white wall opened onto the dirt road. Inside could be seen dim shapes of crates and forklifsts.

"Looks like someone didn't want them to build here," Garrus said. He tapped at the skin next to his holographic headset. "This place is heat-shielded. Only people with privileges like Miranda's can ever find that it's here."

But because she had found it, that was moot to Shepard. She skirted the edge of the dirt-packed road and peered inside the dark bay, blue lights showing up on the gun she kept at the ready as it passed into shadow. Her squad followed.

The occupants figured out that they had visitor soon enough. A squad of masked human agents clattered down a hallway as soon as Shepard got halfway through the room. She saw her own face appear on holographic screens in front of them, alerting each of them who they were dealing with. She quickly crouched behind a crate, watching out of the corner of her eye as Garrus and Joker did the same.

(She has gone from being willing to die for him to being willing to kill for him, and isn't sure where the line stood, but not it was crossed and blurred out and gone.)

And one of the Cerberus guards, male and booming, called out, "Commander Shepard!"

She shifted one foot on the ground, toe-weight scraping through dust. "You have something I want."

"The Illusive Man advises you to go through official channels, Commander Shepard. The contents of this base are carefully monitored."

"I just want the Vrolik's cure. You're keeping plenty of humans in pain by keeping it secret. Release the formula and this doesn't have to be difficult."

There were the sounds of movement, of people readying weapons, as the spokesman turned off his comm and conferred with his fellow guards.

The last thing Shepard heard from him was a quiet, "I'm sorry," and then the Cerberus squad opened fire.


	15. Experimentation

A/N: So that's a hiatus.

I wrote the first draft of this chapter eight months ago. With the help of a beta, I realized things such as that there was way too much going on in that chapter, and that I did not know how to write either gunfights or people being upset. A fandom and a half later, I have some more experience in both. That chapter is also now going to end up being three chapters.

I also finally asked **wordswithout, **the excellent beta, to look over it again. The end result has some bits here and there written by her. Hopefully this story will start back up again at a decent pace now that my mind's been on ME a bit more. It's nearing its end, and I want to finish it long before ME3 comes out. I'd also like to thank **Marianne Bennet **for reminding me that this fic was something I needed to do.

When last we left our heroes, they were invading The Illusive Man's fortress to try to get the cure for Joker's disease...

* * *

**XV.**

Shepard put her back to a crate and braced. She pointed her rifle toward the Cerberus guards, firing two bursts on the momentum of that one movement. One guard got caught in the leg, stumbled, and was hit again by Garrus's shot to center mass. Then Shepard was stepping over him on the way to more.

"I'm sorry," she murmured again.

Shepard, Joker, and Garrus tracked through the base this way, up long spiral ramps that outlined the curved walls of the building. Shepard saw the red laser lines indicating someone had them in her sights, so when she turned the corner she made sure to proceed gun-first. Garrus and Joker were a good squad: quiet, and focused. Shepard kept an eye out for laboratories, and poked into rooms that more often than not turned out to be featureless closets, little spaces where the hall did not quite fit into the wall, or where the guards stored their guns. She was beginning to feel like they would never find anything when one unguarded door opened onto the interior of the tower and a large room filled with lab tables.

The human occupants, one male and one female, immediately raised their hands over their heads.

"Wait!" said the woman, stiff and sharp. "We just work here. It pays better than retail. We don't even have weapons."

Shepard lowered her gun slightly, but did not signal Garrus and Joker at her back to do the same.

The woman said, "Whatever you want, take it. That's what we're supposed to do. Not get killed. What are you here for?" Her voice was flat, with barely an upswing at the end.

"Medical development," Shepard said. "We're looking for a cure." She was reminded of the scientist on Virmire, that not-quite civilian whose life she had spared. She would spare these two as well, but they couldn't know that yet. It wouldn't be safe for Shepard.

The man's expression shut down. He had had emotion before, something frightened and with a little bit of personality to it, but then there was nothing. "It's been taken. We thought—we heard this might happen. I don't have it, I swear."

Garrus said, "Who told you we were coming?"

"It came right from the top. The Illusive Man."

The man gained expression again, nervous wrinkles between his eyes. "He wanted it to be kept secret."

"No he didn't," the woman snapped. She kept one hand on the silver lab table, her body hidden partially behind it. Her curly red hair shook as she turned her head, looking at Shepard instead of her coworker. "He wanted you to go up there. You're Shepard, aren't you? You saved the Citadel. But the Illusive Man has something waiting for you. I wouldn't go."

Shepard said, "Then that's where we're going. Can you get out of here?"

"If—yes. If you let us."

"The doors are open. Go."

Shepard turned, keeping an eye on the nervous scientists as she left the room. Garrus kept paying attention to them too.

"I'd get going if I were you," Garrus said to them in deadpan, momentarily occluding her view with his neck and shoulder armor. "When she pays visits, things tend to explode."

Shepard moved back out into the hallway, and heard the two scientists make quick footsteps down the ramp toward the distant bottom of the building, or maybe toward a lift she didn't know about. Joker stepped up beside her.

"So, we're going to walk into the trap that they just said we're going to walk into?"

"That's the plan."

Joker started to speak, showing teeth biting at his lower lip. Then he reconsidered and shrugged. "A'right."

They spiraled up and up through the silver building. Then there was one last door. Ajar, it could be seen to be a foot and a half thick. One person stood in front of it.

Shepard thought at first glance that it was a young boy, with black pants stretched tight over thin hips, but the face—the face was of an old man, wrinkled and white-bearded. Empty holsters crisscrossed his narrow chest. One bare arm was raised, with a biotic energy sphere glowing bright white in the center of his palm and its blue-purple corona lashing around him. The other arm was thinner, limp and scarred, its skin crisscrossed with pale red hatch marks. Shepard raised her rifle tentatively, watching the man's watery eyes and the set of his shoulders for signs that he might be about to move.

She signaled for her squad to move back, but neither of them went very far.

"Stand aside," Shepard said.

The strange-featured man raised his healthy arm. Shepard jumped to the side as the biotic corona flared, and she felt the edge of a singularity pick her legs up and nearly turn her over. For a moment she felt like she was floating on a bubble, and then her arms smacked against the floor and she got a good look at the dust at the edges of the hall. Her gun and the armor plates protecting her forearms poked against her stomach.

Garrus filled the hall with gunshots as the biotic was recharging. Shepard army-crawled a few feet and stood ready, facing the biotic a few meters away. Garrus backed toward her.

"He's on something," he snarled. "Probably red sand."

Joker was hanging back, almost around the curve of the hall, firing intermittently, working on a curve to keep from grazing Shepard or Garrus. Finally, the wide, open hallway felt like a disadvantage.

Shepard could almost still feel that floating, off balance feeling on her back. Whoever gave humans biotics, she thought, was no friend of the Shepard family. Her usual standard was to get out of the way, make sure the thing she was hiding behind couldn't be lifted up, and shoot them as enthusiastically as possible.

Lacking the 'things to hide behind' part, she skipped right to the end.

The biotic hunched like an old man and threw up a shield that the bullets dissolved into. Shepard almost growled. She backtracked a few steps, made sure her squad was continuing to fire, and switched weapons, racking the rifle back against her shoulders and pulling the Collector particle beam.

The strange door guard sent out another singularity that Shepard dodged. Garrus powered through the edge of it, but behind her Shepard heard a thud as it caught Joker hard enough to drop him. She squeezed the trigger on the particle beam, heard the sheering sound as the energy swept like a taut wire across the hall as she panned. Sparks poured off the biotic's shoulder like off the blade of a saw.

He raised the scarred arm, and threw another biotic power while maintaining the singularity that was causing havoc in Shepard's squad. He pulled her, wrenching the gun from her hands and sending her sprawling on the floor and cursing out biotics again.

Her knee jolted against the floor. A shot overhead muffled her hearing, and the deformed man dropped to the floor with the limp jolt. Shepard followed the glowing trail of the gunshot back to Garrus, standing crouched and slowly lowering his rifle. She was reminded of the shots Wrex fired in anger on Virmire, out beyond the turquoise sea.

Garrus was, after all, a law-keeper at heart. His brand of justice had slightly more dividing lines than hers did.

Joker and Garrus drew nearer as Shepard knelt down beside the fallen guard. His mouth moved slowly, his arms and shoulders twitching. Shepard examined the small hole burnt through his clothing near his heart. "Stay still. You might live through this if we help you."

Garrus kept looking straight ahead. "We need to open that door."

"The door is open," said the guard. He was bleeding through his dark gray shirt. With all the armor in her life, Shepard didn't usually see that. His mouth was going slack, spit bubbling behind pale, almost transparently weak teeth.

Joker said, "Well thank you. Wait. This is supposed to be the Illusive Man's stronghold. Why is the door open?" He growled. "Those scientists said it was a trap."

Shepard knew that he was right, but it still didn't feel right. She tried to think about all the possibilities, envisioning the building like a map. There was a something hidden behind one of those walls. She looked down at the fallen guard and prodded him with her boot. "Are you the trap?"

He started to laugh.

She was taken aback so much that she almost leveled her weapon at him again; the laugh started at the back of his throat and bubbled up, malformed like his limbs. When he spoke his voice was very human and calm, as if she'd asked him whether he worked in a cubicle and he'd said yes he did, you're standing in it.

He said, "I'm not the trap. I'm not sure I could manage to be a trap. I aspire one day to traphood."

Shepard tipped her head.

Joker said, "Maybe I'm not the one to talk, but being at gunpoint doesn't seem to be the best time for humor. Do you want to explain that a little, or..."

The guard leaned his head back on the floor. He said, "My name is Paul, Shepard. And I was the you before you."

Shepard tipped her head again. She moved her gun farther from his arms.

Garrus said, "You did a pretty good job of being a trap. I haven't seen many human biotics that strong. What are you, exactly?"

"I was an experiment, okay? I worked for the Alliance on a couple side jobs..." He paused to breathe, pained gurgles rattling up from burnt-out lungs. "Then Cerberus started talking about new experiments with human tissue, something that could change the way the world worked-" He coughed, cleared his throat, licked the bubbles of spit away but couldn't quite get it all. "The Alliance sent me to check it out, and Cerberus got me. You ever try escaping from Cerberus? Even if I'd bashed my head open they'd be able to...glue the bits back together. They'd been keeping me locked up in here."

Shepard had a feeling that she knew where this was going. But the end of her mission was so close, and she could choose just to ignore Paul and move on…! "Why?"

"They were using me to test how far a person could be gone before they revived him again. They had your body, but it was too valuable to experiment on. So they used mine."

Shepard said, "And you got biotic powers out of that?"

"No. I got biotic powers because being killed on command makes a guy really, really angry. It had been latent before. But then it got shocked into action, or they infected me with somebody else's blood who had it just right. I don't know. It, nnh, it doesn't matter. Does it? They gave me a new, stronger body...or body parts, anyway. And then the Illusive Man decided he could keep me around as a guard once you'd been successfully made. A happy ending." He looked up at her with burning eyes and gave a laugh that wept.

To drown it out Shepard said, "And you didn't, you know, want to get revenge on the people who captured and experimented on you?"

Paul's shoulders and knees relaxed, leaning him flat against the floor. He closed his eyes. "Sure I did. But it doesn't matter what I want. Ah, just try to go in there, Commander Shepard. Go." He paused. "It was always about you, Commander Shepard. They told me that it was for you while they drugged me. I'd seen your face on the news."

Shepard felt cold. "I never knew," she said, and wondered why it sounded like such a tired excuse. There was blood drying on her hands and splashed against the side of her face. "They never told me what they did."

"Was it worth it?"

She flattened her scarred palm on the cold, smooth floor next to Paul's gnarled arm. Small blue-white bulbs of metal like the lights inside Legion bubbled inside his skin. It made him less human; it made all the blood seem incongruous. Still there was real human suffering in his eyes and she alone could understand what sort of pain the biotics were giving him now. If she'd been anyone else but who she was, she would have avoided the question.

"Yes," she said. "It was."

"I started to hate the Illusive Man," Paul said. "He put wires in my head and I thought maybe he could control my thoughts. That maybe he was making me think things. He would come in and just stare. But I think maybe he didn't change anything in my head." He sat up. She reached out to gently ease him back, but he pushed her away.

"Then I started to think, why am I the guinea pig? Why can't I be the end product? Why can't I live forever?"

The mutilated arm lifted and flared with biotics, and Shepard's stomach lurched as she was lifted off the ground, buoyed on a singularity.

Paul said, "And then I started to hate you, Shepard. Because you were lying in the next room dead while I was having things done to me, and you were going to get all the best of it when it was done."

She clamped both hands around her gun even as she arced dangerously toward the wall.

He said, "The Illusive Man didn't have to control me. He just had to promise that when you came to get him I'd get to stand at this door. And I did. He never breaks his promises, don't you get it, he never does—"

Shepard squeezed her eyes shut as she hit the curved wall at the other end of the hallway. The hall filled with light as she got to her feet, her armor suddenly feeling very heavy. Maybe it was the shrill laughter weighing her down. Joker and Garrus shot at Paul even as he created biotic singularities to send their fire wide. Red sparks and blue and purple coronas made the hallway a confusion of color. Footsteps slammed on the ground.

Shepard slalomed through the hallway. With her rifle tucked up next to her chest, she ducked under her teammates' lines of fire. There was no cover here, no crates or benches to hide behind. She dodged between billowing, curling gravity fields tossed by biotic hands.

When she was close enough, she shot him.

It was not pretty or dramatic. It was like every other death she had encountered in loud, crowded battlefields. Paul crumpled with sparks beading above his heart and between his eyes. Shepard let her own momentum carry to her knees beside him. His eyes were open and glazed, his monstrously distorted arm twisted behind him as his body weight brought it to the floor.

That had been a shot almost in the dark.

She wondered how much of it had been luck, and how much of it had been Paul turning out to be not as strong as either of them thought. It hadn't been Shepard's skill. She hadn't planned. She had just acted. It had reminded of her days before the Normandy, when she was just another recruit.

She stood with her arms folded and, although she didn't make a habit of it, prayed in her mind for him to receive some kind of cosmic justice. She wasn't sure what kind.

Joker helped her up, squeezing her hands. She met his eyes and couldn't find anything to say.

Garrus could. "Commander. This man was being controlled. With all due respect, I think maybe we shouldn't do this. Too much could go wrong."

"Cerberus didn't do the same to me." Shepard couldn't keep a snap out of her voice. She had to be sure. They hadn't messed with her brain like they had with Paul's. "Miranda said so." And she had to believe it, or else anything could happen in the next room, Just as anything had happened out here. The back of her neck itched.

Joker said, "And you trust her?"

"Yes. I don't like her, but I trust her." Shepard nodded.

With a quiet hiss, the door opened behind them. All three turned, raising their weapons. Shepard felt the back of her neck prickle as if a wind had brushed at her hair where before the air had been still.

She looked into the Illusive Man's office.


	16. The Storm

I'm finally almost done with this this fic. I wrote the last three chapters in almost one go. I'll be posting the final chapters over the next couple days. There's some stuff in here that doesn't quite jive with Mass Effect 3, because I planned the end before the game came out, but I also integrated some ideas from ME3 where they made sense.

I've kept mostly to the outline I had planned, only changing a few things to tie it into ME3 as best I could. I also made Miranda more sympathetic and changed Nicole's role a bit so she isn't as overshadowed by Warren.

I'm mostly completing this out of not wanting loose ends hanging, as my feelings about Mass Effect have all cooled since game 3, but I'm happy that I've had fun writing it.

* * *

**XVI**

At the end of the narrow hallway, the next room seemed infinite and full of the colors of a dying world. There was the Illusive Man's office, with all its stars and invisible holographic seams. Behind him, a planet glowed with all the pockmarked yellows and oranges of the Normandy crash. At the center were the screens that actually looked like screens, with the Illusive Man sitting between them. They looked the same as they had in the comm suite back on the Normandy, and Shepard was surprised that none of it had been entirely fabricated. The Illusive Man liked his drama.

The Illusive Man was sitting five meters away, but his voice sounded close. "Hello, Shepard. I see you've come to meet me in my home."

Shepard looked around for bodyguards or assassins. The room was empty but for the four of them.

Shepard holstered her gun and marched across the dark, starry floor.

The Illusive Man stood up, tall and square in his gray suit. "We didn't need this, Shepard. We had a professional relationship. You had a job, and Mr. Moreau had a salary."

Joker stepped forward. "You're kinda boring based on the other stuff we've seen today. We just want to find out about the project and go home."

"You know everything about the Lazarus Project," Shepard said. "The proof of that is lying in the hallway."

"You're cruel, Shepard." The Illusive Man leaned back. "You've destroyed the one who allowed you to survive. Nearly birthed you."

She started to say that it was his fault that Paul had needed to be here at all, but a yellow tracer flashed past her right eye, and a gunshot pierced the Illusive Man's arm just below the shoulder. Blue sparks the color of his eyes burst from the wound. Shepard looked aside to see Joker standing with both arms straight out to hold his rifle steady. He stepped forward, pointing the gun at the Illusive Man all the while. He shrugged. "Give us the cure."

The Illusive Man groaned, but looked at his arm with a quizzical detachment that didn't touch his flat, glowing eyes. As Shepard closed in on him she saw that his ruined arm hung limply and sparked. There was no muscle darkly welling with blood; just blue pinpoints of light and black wires over gray tissue, like the skin of a husk. A gun was holstered at his right hip; slowly the wire-bundled arm shifted its fingers toward it.

"Come on," Joker said, still as lazy as if he were lying in bed rubbing his eyes.

The Illusive Man drew his gun. The disconnect at his shoulder made his fingers clumsy, and the shot went low and scarred the floor near Joker's feet. Shepard stepped forward and shot the Illusive Man in the stomach.

Joker shielded his face from the firework of sparks that resulted, and backed away. The Illusive Man swallowed and looked down; his stomach was a ruin of the same blue and black shine as his arm.

Garrus approached. He said, dispassionately, "I wonder if he can survive that."

Shepard berated herself in her head, with silent accusations and speculations: He'll never tell us how to get the cure now. He's forced us to leave with no more than we came with.

The Illusive Man's hands dropped limply from the gun and the arms of the chair. "Miranda knows," he said. "Miranda…knows."

"Useless!" Joker yelled, louder than Shepard had ever heard him before. The Illusive Man's wire-bound body slumped in his chair. The orange stars glowed on.

"It's not him," Shepard muttered, still not sure what to believe about the body in front of her. "This can't be him."

Garrus said, "We've searched the whole building. What now? Back to the ship?"

"What was that?" Joker said, and as Shepard looked down at the Illusive Man's limp face she wondered the same thing.

"A kind of husk?" Garrus said.

"Maybe," said Shepard. It would make sense for the Illusive Man to have decoys. "He must have known we were coming. I don't think this is over."

"Or that was him and now we're done," Joker said. "We can go home and sleep."

"It was over too fast," Shepard said. "This was a diversion."

"So now we go back to Miranda," said Joker. His voice turned suddenly worried and angry. "I shouldn't have left her with the ship."

* * *

As soon as they stepped out of the Cerberus base they realized that they had been sheltered all along from a brutal storm. Shepard bowed her head to shield her eyes from the hurricane winds and pervasive rain. The rest of her skin was dry under the sealed armor, but the wind was tussling the trees and threatening to knock her off her feet.

"It's a summer storm," Garrus yelled over the wind. "We'll be fine if we get inside."

"The train station," Shepard said. She was not going to go back inside the Cerberus base.

They struggled through the forest, bent double. Shepard saw bipedal movement among the trees and raised her gun.

Joker said, "What is it?"

"I don't know."

A lanky human form jumped out from the shadow under the trees and slammed into Shepard. She dropped to the ground, a thin, unarmored form with something hard and heavy in one hand flailing at her face. A gun. But the attacker wasn't using the gun; bare, wet hands scratched at Shepard's cheeks and neck, and dark brown hair thrashed around a snarling face. A Lazarus scar opened above Shepard's eye.

Shepard planted her armored hands on the wiry attacker's stomach and shoved.

The attacker—human, female, young—tumbled off her, and Shepard followed her over. Her knee slipped in the mud and onto the girl's gun, and Shepard leaned down on it to keep it out of the fight, pressing the side of it into the muddy grass.

Next to her, turian feet danced back and forth as Garrus struggled at grips with another assailant.

Joker set the mouth of his gun against the girl's temple. She went perfectly still, scraggly, dyed hair dangling around the pale skin of her face.

Garrus punched the other turian across the mandibles. Shepard heard him thud against a tree, and Garrus gave a rumbling sigh of irritation. The five of them froze as the rain continued to fall.

Joker tapped the gun against the side of the young woman's head. She rolled onto the ground, dripped her weapon from splayed hands.

Shepard sat up, noting the girl's pocketed vest and dark red fishnet stockings. "I remember you."

Garrus was pressing the other blue-tattooed turian against a tree, forearm to neck. "What about this one?"

"I saw him through the scope," Shepard said. "They were on Omega."

"You killed Lara!" The human jumped up and rushed Shepard, who caught the younger woman in one arm and gripped, mimicking Joker's pose with the gun.

Shepard squeezed her tight against her side, ready to throw her. "I killed a lot of people on Omega."

The girl thrashed.

Shepard said, "How'd you find us?"

More thrashing. Shepard twisted her thin arm. Omega. There had been a lot of mercs there and she had shot them, and then there had been the one turian, this turian, who hadn't been doing anything to attack her. There had been a lot of people whose faces she didn't remember.

The turian said, "Miranda Lawson. She hired us to capture you."

The girl shouted, "Stop it, Warren!"

"This isn't right, Nicole," he replied.

"No, no, keep going, Warren," Garrus said assuredly

Warren's flanges lifted and his eyes widened. "Miranda Lawson paid us to stop you from attacking Cerberus and to bring you back to the Normandy."

Joker said, "We all see how well that turned out."

Warren said, "Give me something. Lara was a good person."

Shepard said, "Who was she?"

Nicole whipped her head forward to hit Shepard in the chin with her skull. Shepard hit the girl in the stomach and spun her to the ground, where she moaned and blinked, looking up with narrowed eyes.

Shepard said, "I don't doubt it. Who was she?"

Nicole said, "Cause you're such a good person to talk about it. Asari, purple skin, gang leader? She trained us."

Shepard said, "I'm not going to kill you, and I didn't kill her. I mean, I did. But I didn't know her."

A whole pantheon of emotions passed across Nicole's face. Then she lunged forward, clawing at Shepard's face. Shepard stepped back, willing to let the armor take it and to try to remember…Then there were sounds of fighting from the turians. Shepard saw Garrus keel over and Warren lurch forward. He barreled across Shepard's field of vision like a train, grabbing Nicole by the shoulders and pushing her away.

"That's enough," he shouted, and held her by the shoulders. He whispered something to her, but turian whispers were ungainly to human ears, and Shepard was certain that he had said that hurting Shepard wouldn't bring Lara back.

The girl looked between Shepard, Joker, and Garrus, her hair tossing in front of her face in the wind. Her breath calmed.

"Okay," Nicole said. "I'm done with this."

Warren looked up at Shepard. "Go. Lawson will have locked your ship against you, but there's a shuttle waiting for me at the port. I'll give you the passcode."

The storm made the forest a dark maze filled with rain as Shepard and the four others made their way back to the tram. Shepard said quietly to Joker, "I did kill that asari. I think I remember."

"And almost the turian. But you didn't. He's got it good."

"I wonder if he knows I spared him."

"Does he need to? No one wants to feel like they've got a gun pointed at them that they can't see. And you did say you saw him through a scope."

"That's true."

The rain pounded over Kernade, not-quite-hurricane winds tossing the tops of the trees. The city was a confusion of lights and square, white rooftops in the distance as the five of them crested the hill next to the tram station.


	17. Life on the Normandy

** XVII**

The shuttle was at the spaceport and locked, just like Warren had said. He pressed the passcard against the door's sensor and stood aside to let the others in.

Warren headed for the pilot's seat, but Joker put a hand up. "Wait a second, buddy."

The turian looked down at him. "If Miranda expects me to be piloting the ship, you should not be visible when we arrive."

Joker sighed and acquiesced, heading to the familiar seats at the back of the Cerberus shuttle.

Shepard looked back at Warren as she turned to follow. Garrus headed toward the back as well, while Nicole hovered in the corridor leading to the pilot's seat. "Is Miranda going to be expecting you to come to the ship?" Shepard said.

"No," Warren replied, "but I'm sure she'll let us on."

"Tell her you've got sensitive information," Nicole piped up. "Tell her Shepard told you something you're not sure if it's classified or not. It makes sense for you to see her in person."

"Okay." Warren nodded.

"EDI will know," Joker said. Shepard turned to look at him, still standing in the middle of the shuttle. It should have been normal for her to see him standing straight, but every once in a while it looked surreal. For some reason it was stranger to see him standing in a passenger compartment of a ship than shooting the Illusive Man. "She'll be able to sense how many life-forms are here."

"Can we block that?" Garrus asked.

"No," Joker said, "but I can probably sweet-talk her."

"Probably?" Shepard raised an eyebrow.

"Almost definitely."

"And Miranda won't know?"

Warren had been sitting down and starting the shuttle up, and now he surveyed the lighted console and said disconsolately, "Miranda already knows."

"What?" Shepard turned to him.

"I've got an incoming call from the Normandy."

"Maybe it isn't her," Joker said.

"Everybody shush," Shepard yelled, and shot Joker a sympathetic look. "Let him take the call."

Warren nodded and puffed his flanges out in nervousness. "Okay."

Small steps and the creak of armor were the only sounds for a moment as Shepard stepped back farther from the screens. She heard a click and turned to see Joker looking worriedly out from under his cap, with one armored hand resting on her back.

Warren said, "Ma'am."

Miranda wasn't using visuals, and Shepard relaxed as her familiar voice came over the comm. She had hated Miranda so much for tampering with her body, and after seeing the strange experimentation that was also apparently behind the Illusive Man, or at least one of his decoys, she wondered whether Miranda wasn't also a little afraid. She had been augmented without her own input too, after all.

But a baby genetically destined to be a wonder child was not the same as a soldier forcibly re-designed to destroy for a cruel cause.

"Did you finish your mission, Warren?" Miranda sounded terse, her words coming out as more of a statement than a question.

"Yes ma'am. We're returning to you now."

"And what's the result?"

Warren answered without hesitation. "Shepard and Moreau are dead, but they killed the...whatever you had set up in the base, ma'am."

Miranda sighed. "I didn't want it to be this way."

Shepard and Joker looked at one another.

Miranda regained her composure in the next moment. "Fine. Come deliver your report. We'll have some explaining to do."

"Okay," Warren said, and Miranda signed off.

Garrus looked at Shepard. "Sounds like you dying wasn't part of the plan."

"That means us being paid might not be part of the plan," said Nicole angrily, and Warren looked back at her as he piloted the ship out of Palaven's atmosphere and into star-speckled space. Shepard looked around as if she would be able to see the Normandy immediately. She missed it as if it were human.

Joker said, "So what are we going to do when we get up there? She's going to be irritated - I can't imagine more than irritated, but anyway - when she finds out we're not dead again."

"We deal with what we find." Shepard stared ahead into the tilting stars. Beside her, Garrus nodded.

Joker said, "Okay."

She knew that this tiny admission of care was a lot from him. He wasn't willing to go along with many causes except for his own and hers.

They saw the Normandy within a few minutes, standing sleek and silver in the blackness. Starlight glinted off the name that Shepard had watched be painted on the hull.

Shepard checked the charge on her weapon and looked at Nicole. "Maybe you and Warren should stay here. Miranda's not going to be happy with you either."

"Fine with me," Nicole said. "I didn't want to be here."

"We'll stay in here for now," Warren said. "In case you need to leave quickly. Then we can work out where we're going to go."

"I won't prosecute you," Shepard said. "As long as you know not to come trying to kill me again."

"We tried that already," Nicole said. "We didn't get farther than 'try'."

"What about Lara?" Joker asked. "You don't want to drop your revenge plot."

"Hey," Nicole said, but seemed to lose energy from there. "I dunno what I'm going to do, okay? I'll go back to my family. Lara was a good mercenary. We'll honor her somehow."

"If it helps at all," Shepard said, "I know ignorance doesn't forgive me for that. I'm sorry."

"That's a start," said Nicole. "You owe me. I just don't know what yet."

"We're heading in," Warren said, and Shepard watched with an unfounded but palpable relief as the bay doors in the belly of the Normandy opened.

"Looks like they've got the place in lockdown," Joker said, coming forward to stand close beside her and look at the red lights shining from around the bulkheads.

Shepard felt herself glare as she looked around at the empty room while the shuttle settled in. She wished that she had her helmet. If they were going to go into a firefight in the ship it might help.

"Okay," she said. "Nicole and Warren, you stay here. We'll call the shuttle if we need you."

"And if we have to leave?" Nicole asked.

"It's not that big a ship. We'll find you. Stay alive. Joker and Garrus, with me."

"Of course," Garrus said.

"But I wanted to stay behind and play Solitaire," Joker muttered.

Garrus gave a quiet turian laugh, and Shepard was glad that they were getting along. As she stepped out of the shuttle, though, worry for the rest of the crew overtook her. She tried to drown it out as she took loud strides toward the elevator, but she realized that Jacob would likely come down on Miranda's side if the ship really erupted into Cerberus- vs- Shepard war. The others would protest, though, not knowing the whole story. Especially Tali and Chakwas would always stick up for Shepard, and she hoped they were all right as she stepped into the elevator doors.

When they opened again, the found the CIC oddly empty. Even the consoles leading down the long hall to the bridge were unmanned. Garrus looked around. "Where is everybody?"

"I don't know," Shepard said. "But I bet Miranda is in the communications room. She'll be telling the real Illusive Man that we were killed."

"Or setting an elaborate trap," Joker said.

"Or that." She bit her lip. "What can we do besides walk into it?"

"Not much, I guess. We can't leave her in control of the ship."

"I can't believe the others wouldn't put up a fight," Shepard said, starting toward the armory. "And who's running the place?"

"EDI," Joker answered immediately. "She can't run the ship alone for long, but...she could."

"EDI?" Shepard said loudly, but there was no answer.

Garrus pointed his sniper rifle at the walls as they entered the armory, but Shepard waved at him. "Guns down. We don't want to shoot anybody by accident in these little halls."

Garrus complied.

The door to the hologram suite was closed. Garrus and Joker arrayed on either side of Shepard automatically as she looked at the green-glowing controls. The door was unlocked. If it was a trap this was where it would close.

"Garrus," Shepard said. "When this door opens, I want you to hold the entrance. If there's anything in there keep it from coming out, and if it's safe give us a place to retreat."

"Got it," the turian replied.

"Ready?" Shepard said, and Joker nodded.

She opened the door.

The holo-suite was on, its linked quantum particles spinning somewhere invisibly inside the Normandy's body. Shepard saw Miranda standing in the middle of the room with her back to the door, one thin hand on her hip and the other gesturing. The yellow framework around her showed that from Miranda's point of view she had been transported somewhere else; she was in communications, just as Shepard had predicted.

She turned around. Shepard had a moment to see the frightened expression on her face before Shepard stepped into the yellow light too.

Joker and Garrus emerged into the holographic world behind her. Although in reality she was standing a few feet from Miranda in the Normandy, the entire space looked bigger now. It was an identical version of the Illusive Man's office, and for a moment Shepard was disoriented, like she had never left Palaven. The Illusive Man, whole and unharmed, was sitting in his chair with a lit cigarette in his hand.

"What are you doing here?" Miranda shouted at Shepard, arch as always.

"Same office, different office...?" Joker muttered.

"Different office," Shepard said. "I think it's real this time.

"It is," said the Illusive Man, and Shepard switched her gaze from Miranda to him. "You found something I did not want you to find, but it was an acceptable distraction. Cerberus is bigger than you, Shepard. We can win this war without you, although we would prefer not to."

Miranda said, "I thought you were dead."

"Did you mourn?" Shepard said before she could think about anything else, and Miranda looked surprisingly stricken.

Shepard felt a strong tug on her arm. She turned to see hands reaching out of nowhere, and a moment later she was pulled off balance. She bumped into Jacob, who had reached into the holo-projection and pulled her out with a severe expression on his face. Shepard whipped her arm out of his grasp, prepared to pull her gun on him but not wanting to have to come to that. "What are you doing?"

"Protecting Miranda," he said.

Shepard glanced back at the yellow screen, realizing she had left Joker alone with the Cerberus maven.

A moment later, Joker's back broke through the projection. Miranda hit him, a punch across her body that was aimed for his face but hit his shoulder as he turned. She followed it with another punch to his arm, fast, and Joker cried out, his expression contorting. His shoulder went limp and he backed away fast as if stung, nearly running into Garrus. The turian had slung his sniper rifle at his back and started to hold up his hands to fight. Shepard pushed Jacob, a directionless shove against his chest that took him by surprise with its directness.

"Listen to me," Miranda said. "The cure isn't permanent."

"Are you kidding me?" Joker blurted out.

"We were going to tell you when we were sure. The serum is based on turian flora. You should know that's true, because you saw our research plant on Palaven. Even with continued injections, it will eventually stop working."

Shepard looked back at Jacob, who had hit the wall and recovered. Both Shepard and Miranda held up a hand to tell him to stand down at the same time.

"Why are you telling us now?" Shepard said.

"What else am I supposed to do, commander? You seemed to want to take things into your own hands, and I'm trying to keep as many people safe as I can. Cerberus is a good cause, commander. I've tried to explain this to you."

"We found a...decoy of the Illusive Man on Palaven," Shepard said. "Can you explain that?"

"He had copies built," she replied. "He has a lot of enemies, Shepard. You were never supposed to be one of them."

"Well it looks like I am," she said.

"Why?" Miranda said. She lifted up her arm where a comm signal was blinking green and then glanced back up at Shepard. "Give me a chance to explain."

"You sent assassins after us," Garrus said.

"We sent...handlers," Miranda said. "The Illusive Man has had many plans in place because you were acting so erratic."

"Erratic? You withheld everything."

"Tell us about this serum." Joker looked angry. He rubbed at his arm with one hand, and Garrus offered a shot of omni-gel which he refused. Shepard didn't think the arm was broken but she couldn't be sure. Either way, Joker's eyes were bright and flinty in the bright, sterile light of the comm center. She had rarely seen him both so focused and so angry. "So we killed a freakish robot that TIM built just to distract us, and I'm going to go back to being creaky?"

Miranda tilted her head. Shepard began to think that at least there would be no more fighting. But where was everyone else?

Miranda said, "It's a little more complicated than that, Flight Lieutenant. I have the feeling that you're more interested in your own condition."

Joker shrugged. "Sure."

"We thought at first that it would work. Later tests proved that it would not. Tests administered by your friends Doctor Chakwas." Miranda glanced at Shepard. "This isn't a case of us and them, commander. If it had worked, we would have been pleased. We would have marketed it to others like you. As it is..." She looked genuinely saddened, and Shepard wondered whether Miranda had wondered about the downsides of her own genetic modification and what would happen if it started to decay early instead of increasing her lifespan like it was supposed to.

Shepard felt slightly sick. What would Joker think of this?

It would take time to settle in, she knew.

She didn't even know what she thought of it.

Joker looked back and forth between Miranda and Shepard, his eyes wide and drained of their anger.

"EDI," said Miranda, "please let the crew know what has happened here."

Shepard and Joker both looked up as the AI responded without manifesting. "Should I end the lockdown, Operative Lawson?"

"Yes." Miranda looked at Shepard. "Doctor Solus organized the crew when he thought that you were dead and I had taken over. From what EDI tells me he had some very creative ideas for how to retake the ship. Almost everyone is with him. EDI will explain."

Shepard breathed out. Joker's stare still seemed to be burning into her.

"You lied to me," Joker said to Miranda.

"We didn't lie to you. We presented the facts that we had at the time."

"You brought me back, not knowing this was going to work."

"It will continue to work for some time."

"How long?" Joker yelled.

"A few more months."

"You never asked me about this! You never asked if I wanted to come back!"

His words sank into Shepard's center.

Miranda replied, "Didn't you?"

Joker looked at Shepard, his jaw slack. "Yeah," he said, not looking back at Miranda. Shepard felt his responsibility fall on her. She would need to be there for him - and she would be, because he was always there for her too. "Yeah, I did."

Shepard looked back at Jacob, who was expressionless. "I need to talk to the Illusive Man," she said.

"I'll see what EDI did to the ship," Joker said, looking up.

The AI voice said, "I didn't do anything to it, Mr. Moreau. The crew are returning to their stations as usual right now."

"We'll see about that," Joker replied. He looked at Shepard. "Do you need me here?"

Miranda stepped back from between them, almost back to the still-active holographic cage, and the tension in the room decreased. Miranda wasn't hostile any more.

"Not unless you want to be," Shepard said.

"Okay." Joker nodded. "Be careful."

"He's a hologram," she said. "He can't hurt me."

In the end, Joker returned to the cockpit. Shepard saw Mordin meet him in the hall when the door opened. Garrus and Jacob waited outside the holographic weave while Miranda and Shepard stepped back inside to see the Illusive Man sitting there as if nothing had changed, cigarette still in hand. Where he had one leg crossed over the other before, both his feet were now on the floor as if he had slightly more of a mind to run away. As soon as Shepard entered he lay the cigarette down on the ashtray beside him.

"I'm sure you have questions," he said.

His calmness infuriated her, but Shepard was tired: she felt calmness of her own settle over her and although she wasn't sure it was really what she wanted it helped her get answers.

"You had some kind of synthetic on Palaven," she said. "I want to know what it was."

The Illusive Man nodded. "When I was...younger, I was exposed to ancient technology just like you were on Eden Prime. It taught me any things, including new ways to fuse organic and synthetic life. I had decoys, lesser beings, created in case my enemies should want to destroy me directly. You encountered one on Palaven."

"Ancient technology? How do you know you're not indoctrinated?"

"Not all the technology was ancient. Some of it was very standard, although the AI matrix is more...sophisticated than usual. I do not tend to involve my personal life in mission matters, something I am surprised you have not yet learned. However, you are not the first person I have attempted to revive, Shepard. Do not flatter yourself with that. I understand how the human brain works. It works a lot like a computer without Reapers being involved at all."

She chose to wave away her flickers of curiosity at what he was talking about. "You could still be indoctrinated."

The Illusive Man sighed. "However, I am still fighting against the Reapers. And so are you. I hoped for you to continue in that instead of be distracted by your...curiosity, but I seem to have underestimated that trait."

Shepard said, "It wasn't curiosity. You and Miranda were working against me, and I won't have that kind of divide in my crew."

"And I believe there was no divide."

"That's insane."

"It's pragmatic. Are you ready to go back and fight the Collectors?"

"I am. I still don't think you're right."

"I saved your life once, Shepard. To be honest I am reassured to find that you can hold on to it no matter what gets thrown at you."

Shepard took a deep breath. She would think of this as an aside, Shepard thought. One more mission to help someone out - to help Joker out, the most important part of her crew. But in the end it hadn't helped him at all.

_The human brain works a lot like a computer without Reapers being involved at all. _Shepard could believe that.

The Illusive Man said, "Are you ready?"

Shepard said, "I will be."


End file.
